Arc
by Farmerbob1
Summary: Fanfic based on "Worm" by Wildbow. A middle-aged high voltage lineman becomes a parahuman after nearly dying due to electrocution. He's never paid much attention to parahumans. Not only does he have a lot to learn about himself and his new powers, he has pretty much everything to learn about the cape community.
1. Chapter 1

All rights to the material contained within belong to the author of the original work, which can be found at www dot parahumans dot wordpress dot com (strange formatting had to be used to unbreak whatever the editor is doing to the link)

I am only having fun playing in Wildbow's Universe, I have no claim of ownership, past, present, or future on any character or literary element here, including characters or literary elements that I create myself.

*********Fifth & possibly final Draft (I do welcome suggestions - it's been 25 years or so since I took English classes)*************

"I am an idiot. A complete idiot" I thought to myself as I took one last walk through the house to make sure the coffee pot, lights, stove, etc. were off. Walking in the faraday suit was a bit awkward, but after roughly three decades walking in similar suits, it was awkward in a way that I automatically countered, sort of like walking around on a boat, I guess. I checked my belt, and both of the suit gloves were attached. The suit helmet was on the other side. I grabbed the spare boots by the door and a small bag of toiletries, underwear, and socks.

"Never go on a trip without some spare underwear and socks.", my mother used to say, as my internal dialog continued. She also used to say "Don't be an idiot." And she told me to not be an idiot a lot more often than she told me about carrying spare underwear. But here I go, carrying underwear on my way to being an idiot. I shook my head, as I locked the door, tossed my bag in the passenger seat, and the spare boots into the passenger side floorboards. Then I put the gloves and helmet in the little space between the seats behind the storage divider.

"Begin recording." I said, and the smartphone indicated it was recording.

"Last week, if you had told me I would ever be a cape, I would have laughed at you. This week, I am still mostly shell-shocked and getting used to seeing things from two perspectives at once when my biological half is awake. I have had to start carrying a blindfold for when the headaches start. My familiar really isn't separate from me, he has no thoughts of his own, so at least I'm spared thinking double as well as seeing double. He also can't hear, smell, or taste. More little silver linings I guess. I can tell when he interacts with something, but it's strange when I feel what he feels, kind of like pins and needles when your leg falls asleep. There's really no depth to the sense of touch, it's just pins and needles, no matter how he interacts. I'm getting ahead of myself here, so let me back up a week."

"Pause recording." Backed the truck out of the garage. Hit the garage door opener to close the garage door again. Scanned external house lights, all were off. started backing down the driveway. "Resume recording."

"It was just another post disaster cleanup when it happened. When I started work as a lineman thirty years ago, there weren't Endbringer attacks every few months. Those bastards have really made life hell for linemen, on top of the hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, windstorms, and other natural disasters that have always made life 'interesting' for linemen. I guess I should add capes to the list of things that made extra work for us, though to be fair the capes probably help us enough to balance out the damage they do. It is amazing how much work a line crew can get done with the right capes helping. The good ones know how important power is, and are normally quite willing to help after the fighting ends, if they can."

"Pause recording." I stop and check my mail out of habit, and smile to myself as I toss a couple bills in the seat. One good thing might come from this if everything else goes bad. Freedom from bills. I put the truck back in gear, get myself on the road, and start to drive. "Resume recording."

"Last Thursday after Hurricane Monroe hit Columbia, I was out with my line crew working with a cleanup crew and setting right what the fallen trees, branches and other debris had damaged. We, the line crew, would make sure lines were depowered, the cleanup crew would do their cleanup to make it safe for us to work, then we would make repairs. Rinse. Repeat. Well, it was rinse and repeat until another line crew working nearby finished a repair and turned on their power lines. This wouldn't normally cause any sort of problem. My crew had disconnected & checked that all the lines we were connected to were unpowered, and verified none of the buildings that we were connected to had batteries, solar or co-generation.

"What we didn't know was that one of the buildings was Tanker's lab at one point, and it hadn't been discovered and deactivated after he was put in a coma during the Simurgh battle in New Orleans a couple months before the storm. Tanker had apparently purchased the building knowing that it was at an intersection of two power grids, and had rigged hidden connections to the building from the other grid. So both grids were connected to the power handling equipment underground, and only the grid I was working on had obvious connections.

"I was told that what they found in the investigation afterwards was that the other line was actually the power line that fed the bridging equipment for the facility. When the other line went active, the bridging equipment went active in turn, and failed due to storm damage - resulting in the lines I was working on going live. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but the bridging equipment was tinker tech, and the power was not only line power from the other line, but also magnified significantly in some way that just doesn't make sense in the non-tinker electrical world. The drain earth clamp we had installed failed, allowing the lines I was handling to go live while I was working on them. I was wearing protective gear, a faraday suit. It was almost enough, I wasn't instantly killed, but I had a front row view of what by all rights should have been my own death. When the power hit, enough power was passing through my hands to cause them to clamp onto the lines like vices, and I could not pull away."

"Pause recording." Gripping the steering wheel a bit hard here, need to center a bit. Four way stop coming up. Look both ways, nobody else on the road. I stop anyway, then accelerate again through the intersection. Take a deep breath. "Resume recording."

"At first the majority of the power was passing through the faraday suit, but the suit started to fail almost immediately as the power output of the tinker's bridging equipment started to heat the suit. I could smell the ozone, and feel more and more electricity passing through my arms. The heat of the suit was rapidly increasing. Within a second or two I realized that I was not going to be able to pull away, and the power was almost certainly not just a spike that would pass. I might survive a thirty foot drop onto a sidewalk, but I knew full well that I wasn't going to survive when the best path for electricity stopped being my suit, and started being my body. As soon as I realized this, I threw myself off the little platform between the lines, hoping that my weight would be too much for my muscles to support. It didn't work. I had a very clear moment of irritation, cursing the reality that gives electricians strong hands, wrists, and forearms due to all the lower arm work we do, which is exactly the last thing that you want when trying to escape electrical captivation."

"Pause recording." Reaching to the coffee cup. Bringing it to my mouth with a shaking hand, trying to be careful to also continue watching the road for deer and idiots. Did I really need a drink? No, but doing something with my hands that required a bit more control than driving helped. After a couple sips, the coffee cup stopped shaking and, I put it back in the holder." Resume recording."

"I ended up hanging in the air, hands clamped onto the lines, struggling and kicking my legs as well as I could with the little dexterity left to me while my body was being wracked by more and more electricity and heat as the suit continued to fail. I started smelling bacon, and realized that I was smelling myself cook, and realized rationality wasn't much good here and let myself go berserk. I knew my last hope was that my hands would be damaged to the point where they could not support my thrashing weight before the suit completely failed. At that point I had a blackout for what couldn't have been more than a couple seconds. Immediately after that, I started seeing double and fell thirty feet. I was very fortunate that I fell into a large pile of brush that had been collected next to the road for disposal by the tree chipper trucks that would follow behind the cleanup crews. I didn't break any bones, but I did get a few punctures through the suit, some from the fall, and others because I had to be pulled out of the pile quickly - the heat of my suit caused the pile to catch on fire. I remember that much before I passed out."

"Pause recording." Reaching for the coffee cup with shaky hands again. A couple more long sips. Do I really want to do this? Then I remember what my grandfather once told me. 'Sometimes you have to do something stupid to try and stop something terrible from happening.' He had lost his right arm halfway between wrist and elbow in World War Two when an enemy soldier had managed to get a grenade into his squad's machine gun bunker. He had picked up the grenade, put his arm through the bunker's firing slot and released the grenade, but before he could pull back his hand, the grenade exploded. The explosion blew off his hand and wrist, but killed or crippled the enemy squad that was attacking their position. Me going to do this isn't really any different from him grabbing that grenade. Except he knew exactly what he was trying to do with that grenade. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, really. Coffee cup back in the holder, look in the mirrors and along the roadside. Still no deer or idiots. "Resume recording."

"When I woke up, I was in a hospital room. I remembered what had happened and started talking to get attention from one of the medical staff. Knowing how severe the damage could be, I was very careful to avoid trying to move my arms and only used my voice to try to attract attention. Some people panic when injured, others get clinically detached and analytical. I now know what my reaction to severe injury is. I would have preferred to never have learned that lesson, but I didn't have a choice in the matter, I suppose. While a nurse went to go get the doctor, I started doing little exercises in my head, closing my eyes one at a time, counting from 0 to 20 and back to 0, saying the alphabet forwards and backwards, and basically testing myself for mental damage. The only thing that seemed wrong was that I had double vision whenever I looked to the sides, but when I looked straight forward, the double vision cleared up - in fact everything looked extremely clear when I looked straight forward.

"The doctor was very straightforward with me when I asked him why I was clear-headed, but still not feeling anything at all in my hands and arms, which I could see were still there under all the bandages. He told me that my hands and arms didn't have any sensation because I had some sort of tinker nerve block cuffs on my elbows. There was a resident nurse who had the ability to regenerate people, but she had been busy all day with post-operative healing. I was fairly high up in the list of non-life-threatening injuries that she would tend to, since both of my hands were pretty much cooked, but she had worked a eighteen hour day already and had gone home. I mentioned that I had been doing mental tests on myself and he asked what I had done. I told him what I had done for mental tests and mentioned my double vision.

"He checked my eyes with the little light, verified the medical monitors were properly connected, and asked me some questions about myself. He then made some notes on my chart, telling me that I might have a very mild concussion, but there wasn't any indication of it that he could see other than the double vision I was reporting. After that he explained that the nurse regenerator's ability would take care of my eyes as well – I would leave her care in better condition than I was before the accident, since her power also fixed teeth, eyes, nerves, removed scars, and pretty much made you exactly the way you would be if you had never been hurt by anything. He made sure that I didn't have any arterial stents, bone pins or plates, tooth implants, cornea implants, etc., as those would need to be removed before regeneration treatment or they would be ejected extremely painfully and slowly from the body.

"He further explained that the nurse's healing was slow acting, and after she treated me, it would take about a day based on the severity of my visible injuries, unless I had implants, cancer, or radiation poisoning or something of a similar magnitude wrong with my body that would slow the healing. I would also be absurdly hungry, so hungry that even hospital food would taste good."

"Pause recording." I saw Bob's Fuel and Seed shop on the right, and pulled in. I was smiling to myself as I recalled that last bit, because he had been right. Tuna salad and orange gelatin never tasted so good. Not even Grandma's, though you can be certain I would never have said that to her, even if she were still alive. I spent a couple minutes topping off the fuel in the truck, checking the oil, looking over the tires, and cleaning the windows, etc., more out of habit than out of need. Then I walked inside. Bob wasn't there, just one of his teenage employees who I didn't know. She sort of looked at me funny, and asked what the suit was.

I smiled back. "It's a faraday suit for working on high voltage power lines."

The young lady just said "Oh." and went back to counting stuff behind the counter, apparently doing some inventory of the tobacco products. I picked up a couple biscuits and a refill on my coffee, paid for the gas and the food, and headed back out onto the road driving towards the highway. "Resume recording."

"The floor nurse returned after the doctor finished making notes, showed me how to use my feet to activate the call button, and, umm, helped me take care of some biological needs. You never realize exactly how embarrassing life might be without hands, until your hands don't work.

"Shortly after I returned to the bed, I started to get a headache because of all the double peripheral vision. Things got really confusing when I closed my eyes, but I didn't stop seeing things. I also stopped seeing double when my eyes were closed. Let me rephrase that. Despite the fact that my eyes were closed, I could see, and my peripheral vision was no longer doubled. With my eyes closed, my vision was even clearer than it had ever been as far back as I could remember. In fact I was seeing things which I'm pretty sure no normal person could see. I was able to read an article on a newspaper sitting on a chair on the opposite side of the room.

"Everyone living in the world today knows about trigger events, so it didn't take me long to figure out that apparently I was now a cape, and could see better with my eyes closed than with them open. It was actually pretty cool, and I decided not to mention it to anyone. Super vision wasn't exactly be a power that would tempt me to take up a life of fighting crime, I figured, but since I'd be healed by the nurse, I'd come out ahead!"

"Pause recording." I was going to be needing to do some interchange navigation, and the onramp at this exit was extremely short. Working through the light traffic was no problem and I was soon on I-20 headed North towards I-26. I unwrapped one of the biscuits and ate it while trying to bring back some memories that were a bit less vivid. A couple sips of coffee to wash it down. "Resume recording."

"It was actually pretty fun looking around with my eyes closed. I noticed a couple things right off. I could read mirror images just fine, like they were normal. I would see them, recognize they were mirrored, and then they would sort of flip and I could read them. After one flip, everything I saw through the mirror was corrected, but if I looked away, then back again, it would take a bit of time for a new viewing at the mirror to flip. Apparently mirror-image correction for my familiar's vision is some sort of automatic correction for me, but it takes a short time, and at that point I didn't know I was seeing through my familiar's eyes. I thought I was seeing directly from my brain or something. This is actually still one of the most annoying things about my power, honestly. I don't want mirror images to "fix" themselves. Good with the bad though, at least first glances are normal mirrored images. So I can still drive and use mirrors in a vehicle properly as long as I keep my focus moving, and don't concentrate my vision on one mirror too long.

"With all the head turning I was doing with my eyes closed, it wasn't too long before a nurse showed up – apparently there was a motion monitor in the bed, and I had set it off, and they had seen my eyes were closed. They thought I was having a nightmare, and one of the nurses walked in and knocked on my door and asked if I needed something to help me sleep more soundly.

"Considering that I did have a few minor holes in me from falling 30 feet into a pile of brush, I was a bit achy, so I agreed to take some pain/sleep medicine. Since I have no known allergies, I just told them to surprise me when they asked what type of medicines I could take, which made the nurse chuckle. She still checked my charts to be sure I didn't have a documented allergy or addiction though."

"Pause recording." Unwrapped the other biscuit. Not really hungry, but not sure what the next few hours might bring, so I ate half of it anyway, and would eat the other half when I got to the field. Took a couple more sips of coffee to wash down the biscuit, a few seconds to organize thoughts, and continued. "Resume recording."

"After taking the medicine, whatever it was, I went to sleep. Or rather, I thought I did. It was really pretty strange. You know how sometimes you can be in a dream, and know you are in a dream? It's a bit like that for me now, every time I sleep. Except I don't dream imaginary things any more. My dreams are me living through my familiar while my biological body rests. I've watched my biological body sleep while I'm active in my second body, and immediately after I fall asleep, REM begins. I didn't know that then though, and attributed the odd perspective to some sort of drug induced hallicination. The odd thing was that being drugged had no effect on my thought clarity that I could tell, but I couldn't seem to smell or hear.

"I decided to see if I could move my body when I was asleep, and I could. That was when I noticed that even though my field of view had changed like I was sitting up, my body hadn't moved. I could see that my body was still prone. It took me a second or two to realize that I was looking down at my body from somewhere else. I was a bit shocked by that realization, had a brief moment of thinking that I was dying and was having an out of body experience. Before I realized it, I was laying back down again, in the same position as my biological body. When I lost my concentration, I snapped back into my body, like some sort of astral form in the comic books I used to read when I was a kid.

"That scared the crap out of me right there. I'm by no means a religious man. I'm actually a pretty militant agnostic when it comes to religion - to the point where I get angry when atheists try to claim that agnostics are in some way a subset of their anti-religious beliefs. What part of "neither believe nor disbelieve without proof" do the confused atheists not understand? Crap, sorry, off topic again.

"Back on point again. What started going through my head at that point was that maybe I was barely holding onto life due to some reaction with the pain medicine and that there really was a soul that was separate from the body? Then I realized that there was a possible alternate solution. I already has some sort of cape vision power, maybe I had other powers too? With capes in the world, the burden of proof for me to accept the existence of a deity had pretty much gone up to "personal visit from deity" rather than some sort of unexplainable miracle that affected me directly. Just to be sure, I offered up a silent invitation for anyone listening to my thoughts to come down and pay a visit if this was meant to prove to me that they existed. There was no answer. Barring a future visit from a being able to prove it is a deity or the representative of a deity, my religious status is still agnostic.

"If you listen to this, and I don't make it, I want to be cremated, and my ashes dispersed at sea. No religious funny stuff. I might be wrong, and there might be a deity, but I tried to live my life in a way that I didn't hurt anyone, and I'm about to risk my life to try and help save a whole bunch of lives. If that's not good enough for some deity, then I suppose I don't really 'get' what it means to be good."

"Pause recording." My concentration on the road had wavered a bit too much and I quickly scanned for idiots, since deer were rarely a problem on I-20. An idiot in a minivan blew past me at what must have been 100 miles per hour, passing on the right, weaving between cars, and startling several other drivers based on the way their cars moved in reaction to the idiot's passing, but nobody lost control. A blue light started flashing up ahead. Unmarked car. Good. The unmarked car was a sports car, and the officer behind the wheel proved he knew what he was going, quickly accelerating and pacing the idiot, who apparently saw what kind of car the cop was driving and decided that getting away wasn't going to be easy, if possible at all. The minivan pulled over, the officer behind them. Traffic returned to normal. A couple more sips of coffee, another scan for idiots, and I finished passing a school bus and got myself back in the far right lane. "Resume recording."

"By this point, if it wasn't obvious before, it should be obvious now that I know that I might die soon, and this is a verbal recording for posterity, and for my distant family, so they can know what happened to me. There's not a whole lot of time left before Dragon's transport arrives. Behemoth has been spotted, and I'm going to go do my part. Whatever part I can find to do.

"After I got myself calmed and realized that even if this was a deity-inspired event, it still wasn't proof of a deity to ME, I needed to start experimenting more to try to figure out what, if any, other abilities I had. The first thing I needed to do was see what my second body looked like, because if I wanted to keep a secret identity, the last thing I should be doing is showing myself to have two bodies on camera in a hospital. So I decided I needed to wait until the pain medicines wore off, so I could see myself without drugs, through my human eyes. The next four hours or so were crazy. I could NOT go to sleep. It was infuriating.

" Since then I have discovered that I literally can't sleep like a normal person any more, in the sense that my mind changed from a waking state to a sleeping state. I just switch active brains, or something. Maybe I only need to sleep like a normal person once a year, but when I sleep, I'll sleep for a month? I do enter a REM state when my intellect is fully contained in the second body. I've only been doing this a week, and can't even decide what to call my "other half" yet, so I'm not setting anything in stone yet about my new abilities. For all I know they will change again next week, or next full moon, or next sunspot cycle, or whatever. Sorry if I confuse you with references to bodies, biological body, familiar, second body, or whatever else I might call various aspects of myself.

"OK, back on topic again. After trying to sleep, and failing, I was able to at least figure out how to stop getting visual input from my second body, so I could finally turn off my vision completely. But I still couldn't sleep. I decided that it wasn't worth trying to force myself to sleep, and concentrated on seeing if I could hear anything, smell anything, or feel anything. The only sense I have other than sight in the second body, as I mentioned before, seems to be a tactile sense which is very crude. I was able to feel a difference where my second body's arms passed through the tinker devices, a slight pressure there. I also realized that when I sat up, I hadn't dislodged either of the monitor wires or the IV."

"Pause recording." I-20 to I-26 interchange shortly, then the I-26 to I-126 exchange, so I need to watch the road carefully. A couple sips of coffee and almost all my attention to the drive for a while. Driving's always been something I enjoyed doing. I almost took up driving a rig for a living before I started doing electrical work, I even took the classes and picked up a bit of debt doing it. My grandfather helped steer me there too, when I came to him struggling with the decision to become an electrician or drive a rig for a living. He never told me what to do, he just helped me ask myself the right questions.

I really wish he were still alive, more than just a memory, because I would really appreciate some of his questions right now. No matter how old one gets, or how confident, there's still a need for advice every now and then. A few minutes of memory lane later, and I was on I-126 headed into Columbia, staying in the right lane. "Resume recording."

"By the time my biological body had recovered from the drugs to the point where I could trust its senses, I was getting pretty impatient. I was extremely relieved to note that my biological eyes could not see my second body. Then I realized that some capes were able to be invisible to people but were still visible on cameras, so I needed to see if I could find a way to test and see if my image could see itself in a camera. This meant that I needed to get my second body to the nurse's station, because at least one of their cameras was probably facing the station itself, for security and oversight reasons.

"So I got out of bed, and my second body stumbled a bit as my mind tried to process seeing things from two completely different directions at the same time, while trying to walk on what felt like legs that had fallen asleep. I decided it was best for me to just pretend to be asleep in my biological body, so I closed those eyes, and things were much better. I looked at my second body with my second body's own eyes and I could see a transparency roughly human shaped. More thoughts of souls and whatnot threatened to take over my attention for a while but I got back to business. As I walked away from the bed towards the door, I noticed something odd, and stopped. Took another step, and stopped again. The room was getting bigger.

"After a few steps back and forth, and using the tiles on the floor for rough measurements, comparing my biological body to floor tiles to my second body, I figured out that the room wasn't getting bigger as the second body got farther from my biological body, it was my second body that was getting smaller, and it was some sort of geometric progression. At about a meter away from the bed I was around one-fourth my normal height. This was great! By the time I made it to the door, I was very small indeed. By the time I made it to the nurse's station across the hall from my door, I was about as tall as a prescription drug bottle.

"At that point I realized that apparently the drugs were not completely out of my system, because I had just done all sorts of things with my second body that would be visible to anyone watching on camera. So I already had my answer since nobody had said anything or noticed the antics of my other body, I thought, but needed to verify that I hadn't just been strangely lucky. I had a bit of a concern about being able to get up to look at the monitors, but decided I was going to try something first. I had figured out by that point that my second body was electromagnetic in some way, shape, or form, so maybe it was weightless, and could fly, or at least jump really well? Maybe I could pass through physical objects? It was obvious that I could pass through physical objects, because I didn't take the IV, sensors, or tinker cuffs with me in the second body but could I interact with them, or pass through them interchangeably? The answer (as you might know by now, if you are hearing this) is yes, mostly.

"Pause recording." Watch idiot doing lane changes and weaving between cars without bothering to even signal. No blue lights this time, unfortunately. They pass out of range for me to be concerned about. Sip of coffee. It's starting to cool. "Resume recording."

"My second body can interact with the real world, and it can pass through almost anything, even, as I will probably demonstrate later today, a faraday suit. Passing through an undamaged solid sheet metal container, however, is impossible. But I can put a hole in metal sheet just like you can with an arc welder. After experimenting some more with different mesh size screens, I found that the second body can pass through them without harming them, but I would have to do so carefully. The tighter the screen mesh, the harder it is to pass through it, and the more energy that is released when I pass through it. If I pass through a screen fast enough, I can simply melt the screen. I was rather happy that I was only a few inches tall and made a very tiny inconspicuous hole in the screen outside the window of the hospital room.

"That's when I realized that continuing to test myself in a hospital was stupid and dangerous, especially under the influence of whatever drugs I had been given, so I stopped testing myself, rang the floor nurse and asked for him to turn on my TV and put the remote by my feet. He chuckled, ducked out of the door and reached into his cart of supplies and returned to the room with a remote that was attached to the footboard of the bed and was designed for foot operation, and programmed it to talk to my TV. Amazing what you can find in hospitals.

"Pause recording." Huger Street and downtown Columbia traffic. It's after rush hour now though, and before lunch, so it's not terrible. After getting onto Huger Street, I don't see any problem traffic. I stay in the middle lane to avoid people needing to turn, and continue down towards Blossom Street. "Resume Recording."

"Two days later, I was released home fully healed. The nurse who did the regeneration for me was wonderful, even if she looked more like a frog than a human. I think I surprised her by not being afraid in the least, nor rude. She seemed very shy and it was extremely obvious that the very large and very observant orderlies working with here were not taking shit from anyone. Living in the south as a non-white person can be rough in some places. I don't want to imagine what it must be like living in the south as a non-white frog person. Her name was Dorathea, and since I have no immediate next-of-kin, I want all of my worldly possessions to go to her if I don't survive what's coming, and have made my will out to that effect. What she does for people deserves a greater reward than can possibly be paid with material things, but maybe she could use my material things to make her life a bit more comfortable if I don't need them any more. Of course I didn't tell her this - it probably would have creeped her out, no matter how I phrased it."

"Pause recording." I smiled, imagining Dorathea's potential good reactions. I am land rich, but not money poor. Between Grandpa, Grandma, and all the other relatives who had passed over the years, I had inherited well over 1000 acres of mostly undeveloped farmland, which I had used to trade, buy, sell, etc. and collect into one large piece of land in a single property around my home, which about twenty years ago I started to tend as a tree farm. Right now, about thirty acres per year were maturing to be harvested. In another ten years I'd have fifty acres per year of mature trees to sell every year, with minimal tending necessary except to watch for pine beetles , fires, and keep logging roads clear. I also leased out about half of it to a hunt club for enough money to maintain the entire operation, making the tree harvests pure profit.

If Dorathea had any desire for a restful, relaxing place surrounded by nature, and something bad happened to me, she'd have it. I made sure to write out a very detailed description of how the current operation worked, so there would be no confusion about what was planned, but of course she would be able to do whatever she wanted with it, if she didn't want the land. I had even included a buyout offer from the hunt club, while warning that it was a lowball number, in case she were to want to simply sell the place. I also gave her a letter of recommendation and introduction to give to the real estate agent that had helped me collect about 200 acres over the last ten years. Jackson was a good friend of mine, going back all the way to grade school, and in that letter I explained to him why Dorathea might be coming to him. He would work in her best interest.

A lot of satisfaction, with a little worry, but I remind myself there is no need to worry, really. Either the land would stay mine, or I wouldn't be in a position to care about it any longer. I shook my head and looked at traffic again. No worries. Sip of coffee. "Resume recording."

"To shorten a long story a bit, since I went off on a tangent again, no, a standard video camera or webcam can't detect me in my basic second body. Experimenting at home with a IR and UV camera, voltmeter, some crickets from a local bait shop, and various other materials, I discovered that my second body is really good for sneaking and hiding, is always visible in UV, and that I could go about 100 feet away from my body before I snapped back, but whenever I interact with animals, I shock them. I could pick up crickets, but it was very obvious that they were extremely unhappy. However I was unable to feel my second body shocking me when I carefully touched the BACK of my real body's hand. Electrician's trick that. Always test an unknown potential shocking source with the back of your hand if you don't have a tool to test with, and you are confident that there isn't enough power to simply smoke you. This led me to discover two things in turn.

"The first thing was that my skin is now incredibly conductive. It's not a superconductor, but after a lot of testing, it seems to be about as conductive as gold. With a voltmeter I could see that I was being shocked by my second body - grounding from it's hand through me into the ground, I just couldn't feel it. It's not just my skin either, the inside of my mouth, and, umm, various other orifices that I tested VERY carefully, were all conductive at a level roughly that of gold. I even went as far as very carefully cutting myself with a razor on both forearms and testing subcutaneous tissue. Either my entire body is conductive as gold, or my skin and blood is. I didn't have the tools to be more precise. All this conductivity without any discernable difference in the feeling of my body that I could tell, and apparently it hadn't been picked up by the hospital monitors or the healing nurse either.

"The second thing is the reason why I am recording this today. I noticed that when I pressed half a dozen 9 volt batteries against my skin, my second body actually became barely visible to my naked eye. As I progressively started testing with more and more power, my second body became easier to see with the naked eye. It also got bigger. But I could feel no difference in the second body itself, it still felt the same way. After I tested with a five amp 120 volt circuit, when I picked up a cricket, it sizzled and cooked in the palm of the second body's hand. The vaguely scary thing was that I couldn't even feel the power flow from the five amp, 120 volt circuit, no matter where I connected leads across my body. More testing revealed that the power doesn't need to pass through my skin to feed my second body, it just needs to pass within a few inches of my skin, and my second body could absorb it, no matter how far from me the second body was.

"After noting that my second body was starting to leave smoldering spots on the carpet, I stopped testing and sent it into the garage and tried to figure out how to depower it, so I wouldn't burn down my house. I also made sure to look and see what features I could make out on the second body. It doesn't look like me at all, really. Roughly the same build, but the hands and toes don't have digits, no appearance of hair, and the face is featureless, no nose, mouth, ears, and only a couple dimples where the eyes would be. Imagine a guy in a full body spandex suit, including the head, wearing long underwear, socks, mittens, and a hockey mask underneath to break up the definition. I was particularly annoyed at the lack of thumbs.

"Pause Recording." Double check traffic, move to left lane. Turn left on Blossom Street. Signal to the right, and let the idiots making illegal left turns pass me before I move into the rightmost lane. Sip of coffee. "Resume recording."

"It didn't take long to figure out one way to use the power I fed the second body. Give the body power to feed it, and fry or melt things to drain the power. It actually acts as a power multiplier if my rusty physics calculations on power requirements for melting copper are accurate. The five amp 120 volt power source fed into me, could melt about a pound of copper house wiring scraps in a steel pan held by my second body, in about ten seconds, with the whole mass starting at room temperature. In another ten seconds or so, the steel pan starts to glow like the heating element of a stove. That was when I decided it was time to get a truckload of firebrick brought to my house, and I built a crude kiln for testing my second body in. I also discovered that I am NOT immune to heat. After the first test with the steel pan and copper wires, I tried to burn myself with a match. It hurt just as much as I remembered burning matched hurting years ago before I quit smoking. I'm conductive to electricity, not heat. My other body, however, does seem to be immune to heat.

"I learned that my second body could change size, and that the more power I fed it, the farther away it could be from me at any given size. The size, power, and distance from my biological body to the second body are all related. The second body will always shrink to a speck in size before snapping back to me without my control, but the more power I give it, the farther away it can be before it must snap back. The smaller it is at any given range, the denser and more precise its power is. However I discovered that the body is a lot less responsive when it is very small. I never lose control over it, but it gets slow, heavy, ponderous feeling if it's very small. When the body is very large, it becomes too fast and erratic to easily control. Keeping the body at any size other than it's default size for it's range and power is a balancing act, and I don't have a whole lot of experience balancing it, but I can say that if I keep it at human size, after powering it from a five volt 120 amp circuit overnight, it can travel 10 miles from me, and interact with inanimate objects and crickets without damaging them severely.

"I also learned that I can safely burn off power by accelerating the body rapidly. The second body can't do super speedster speeds, but in a moment of fun one night I went to the motor speedway during a competition, powered up the body enough so it was visible at human sized, and carved "Race? Clock me?" on a rock. According to the race announcers, my top end speed seems to be about 120 miles per hour, and I get to that speed almost instantly. It costs a LOT amount of power though. I also melted foot shaped holes in the asphalt while running. Flaming footsteps for real. The news was funny that night and the next day, fortunately the speedway's insurance covered the asphalt damage I caused. The track owner was kind enough to announce that insurance had covered the damage I caused, while at the same time asking me not to return and run any more races - unless I was in a car."

"Pause recording." Sign for Owens Field up ahead. I pull into the parking lot for a gas station, and put my helmet on, then drive the last few hundred feet to the entrance to Owens Field. There is a small crowd there. Also a couple police officers who are turning most cars away into a large parking lot, preventing them from entering the fenced area with a couple cars and a shuttle parked inside.

I roll down the window and one of the officers looks at me as I stop next to him at the direction of another officer. "You going to fight Behemoth, or just dressed up and coming to watch the heroes?"

"I hope to help against Behemoth." I stated calmly.

"Please demonstrate some aspect of your cape ability? I do not recognize your costume."

"I'm new. One second." I figured that I might get challenged to demonstrate power, so I already knew what I would do to prove I had a power. I set the brake, made sure the truck was in neutral, pulled the hood latch of the truck, and got out. The officer looked confused. "I need to get out of the truck and get power from the battery before I can show you proof that I'm a cape."

The officer nodded. "Be quick about it please."

"It won't take long." A crowd was beginning to gather, but not too closely. I finished unlatching the hood of the truck, sent my spark out and had it stand next to me, and put my forearm over the two posts of the battery, not quite touching. The spark slowly began to focus in front of my eyes. The crown mumbled and ooh'ed and aah'ed a bit, and a few smartphones were obviously recording me, and panning over my truck. One person was obviously moving so they could see through the open door of the truck and record what was visible there.

The officer looked between me and the spark. "OK, head on through." He keyed the radio extension clipped to his collar. "White older model two door compact pickup, verified cape. Think it's the one from the race track that ran races and burned the pavement."

A female voice responded. "Thank you officer, I'll activate the gate now."

"Thank you." I said as I dropped the hood of my truck, then collapsed my second self carefully back through the suit.

The gate opened. The officer keyed his mike again. "Roger that Dragon, he heard you and is moving."

I quickly pulled through the gate and parked near to the other vehicles. A man in armor or a robot or something walked over to my truck. "Do you need assistance carrying gear to the shuttle?" The female voice that I heard before said.

"No, but do I have a couple minutes to finish up a recording, some coffee, and a biscuit before we go?" I asked.

"The head cocked sideways at my mention of coffee and biscuit. Sure. Five minutes. There was a problem with the fuel truck they sent, and my other remote is repairing it now."

"Thanks." I got back into my truck, rolled up the window, and ate the rest of my biscuit, then a sip of coffee. "Resume recording."

"I have considered how to try to use this power benevolently, and I can only think of a few ways. It's too dangerous for me to be around humans when my other self is powered up to the point where it would be an effective combatant, but if I regulate the power level and distance from me, I can do very effective recon. I went out into the woods nearby two nights ago and was able to move slowly and quietly enough to sneak up on deer and give them little static electricity sparks to their tails, which was hilarious, if a wee bit cruel. The second body apparently has no mass to speak of, and in a low power state can walk on top of leaf clutter without disturbing it. Unless I try to pick something up - then the body has the weight of whatever it picked up. As for the deer, no harm done, I had to test stealth on something, and deer are very cautious animals, who won't report stalker capes to the police like humans would do.

"Right now this basically relegates my potential roles to scout, or brute force combatant where collateral damage is not of significant concern. And I'm really not so sure how much brute force I can really apply. I can't safely test myself like that. I would not be able to forgive myself if I fried somebody innocent in a fight, but if it came right down to it, I could easily see myself trying to track down the Slaughterhouse 9 in scout form, then powering up and melting them. But I'm enough of a realist to understand that I do NOT have the experience to even think about going against that bunch yet.

"Which leads me to today. Either scouting or brute force combatant if I can find enough power to let me fight from very, very far away. If there's any Endbringer where I'll have a chance to test myself up close, without having to worry about others also getting close around me, it's Behemoth. Apparently he is really brutal up close, and can kill most capes instantly if they get close. I'm pretty sure that he can't hurt my other body, but I'll have to ask if there's any way to test to see if that's true. I have arranged for a time delayed email to be sent to the Columbia Parahuman Group if I do not survive. It will be from account Arcnspark , and will establish my identity. Hopefully it will not be necessary for anyone to listen to this recording."

"End recording. Consolidate all recordings from last 'Begin Recording.' to last 'End Recording' command into file 'Readme' Rename chip in slot A Readme. Write file Readme to chip name Readme, then eject chip name Readme. Copy File Readme in email to Arcnspark. Schedule forwarding of Readme from account Arcnspark to Columbia Parahuman Group three days from now, with alarm reminder to be sent to this phone after two days." A small memory chip popped out of the phone, and I put it into disconnected chip storage on the phone.

I take a deep breath, shake my head in wonder that I'm actually doing this, and then grab my coffee and drain what's left. After opening the door of my truck, I put on the faraday suit gloves, and grab my spare boots in one hand by their laces, and the small travel bag with the other hand.

I get out of my truck, drop the bag and boots, hit the lock next to the window with my elbow, check for wallet and keys in my jeans through the access slots in my suit. I pick up the bag and boots again, realize I should have closed the door of the truck with my hands when they were free and then shrug to myself, bump the door shut with my hip, then walk to where Dragon's transport is waiting. I got some curious looks from people with real costumes. One, a slightly overweight middle height guy in a SWAT suit carrying a huge pack marked with a red cross looked at me and asked "Is that a faraday suit?"

"Yup. About the closest thing to a costume that I have right now. If I make it through this, maybe I'll get something better", I said, feeling a bit self-conscious. The cape that addressed me noticed something in my body language and immediately said "Most of us were in your shoes once, don't worry about the suit. How long have you been a cape?"

"Not long", I replied. "That was me at the Speedway, two days ago, testing myself, if any of you keep up with local cape stuff."

"Oh! I remember seeing that on the news, but I thought you couldn't speak, and your shape seems completely different now than the other day?" He said skeptically.

"That was the other me. I've never been a big follower of the cape scene, but as far as I can tell from the power classification system, I seem to be a master, and my other self is either a striker or a stranger, depending on circumstances. I imagine that we can talk on the way there though. Behemoth won't wait for us. I also have to leave a small package with Dragon in case I'm unlucky today."

"Fair Enough. What should we call you?" he asked.

"Arc is what I've settled on. How about you?"

He looked a bit startled, maybe he was surprised that I didn't recognize him, but he recovered almost instantly. "You need to learn about local capes if you're going to be one. My name's Red Cross, I'm a medical equipment tinker" he said with a chuckle as he tossed the huge backpack into the transport, then slapped the cross marking, before pushing it across to where someone else grabbed it and tied it down.

"Good to meet you, Red Cross."

"You too. Folks, meet Arc. He's new. Master Striker Stranger. We'll talk about what you can do on the way there, Arc, and Dragon will be listening. We'll also need to know what sort of power level you can operate at, if you can think of examples of what you've done that has been stressful or difficult. None of the rest of us here are going to be fighting Behemoth directly, but we've all been around the block a few times, and you're a greenhorn."

"Arc, I heard you mention that you had something to give me?" said Dragon from the speaker system.

"Yes Maam, I would like you to hold this recording for me, and access it only if I am severely injured and unable to communicate, or dead." I replied. "I'm new to this whole cape thing and this details how my will can be found if Murphy catches up with me, and should establish the legitimacy of the will." All three of the capes looked at me a bit funny, then two of them looked at a third, who shook his head.

"That might be a bit of a legal sticky point, you realize, if it hasn't been electronically notarized?"

"I hadn't considered that. Can you electronically notarize it?"

"Not without reading it. Will you allow me to read it now?"

I had to think about it for a second. But only a second. If I couldn't trust my secret identity to the most powerful Tinker in the world, the person responsible for the day to day operation of the Birdcage, then I might as well have no secret identity at all. "Yes you can read it now provided that any personal information about my life is not provided to any other person unless I am severely injured and unable to communicate, or dead. The descriptions about my powers, and how I have tested them can be shared with any capes that you feel will be able to use the information and help guide me to where I can help the most."

The remote that had approached me earlier stepped out of an alcove in the shuttle, and held out it's hand. I passed it the chip, which it took to the control panel of the shuttle and fit into a connection there. Then the remote returned to me and handed me the chip again.

About two minutes passed - during which time Dragon did a thousand other things while pretending to spend two minutes accessing the recording and notarizing the document, rather than the few milliseconds that it actually took her to accomplish the task. "Arc, I have notarized the document. I need you to notarize it as well. A voiceprint matching the recorded document will suffice. There are legal loopholes for capes in costumes for this sort of thing."

"I notarize the document. Thank you, Dragon."

"You're welcome, Arc. I am in discussion with others that are on the way to the site. We will arrange for a power supply for you to feed your other body with. You indicate that you have not felt any stress with the testing you have already done. Is that the limits of your testing, what is in this document?"

"Yes Maam, I've never felt the slightest stress or strain, but I haven't tried to handle commercial grade power sources, never mind whatever a tinker might dream up."

"Testing during an Endbringer fight isn't normally a good idea, but we can certainly manage to make room for your other self with the scouts, if you can't feed your other self the power it needs to let them fight Behemoth directly."

"Understood. I'll let the more experienced capes call the shots. I didn't even have a cape name until about thirty minutes ago." I said with a chuckle.


	2. Chapter 2

All rights to the material contained within belong to the author of the original work, which can be found at www dot parahumans dot wordpress dot com (strange formatting had to be used to unbreak whatever the editor is doing to the link)

I am only having fun playing in Wildbow's Universe, I have no claim of ownership, past, present, or future on any character or literary element here, including characters or literary elements that I create myself.

*********Fourth Draft (I do welcome suggestions - it's been 25 years or so since I took English classes)*************

Red Cross asked Dragon if she was done talking with me for the time being and when she said she was, he introduced me to the other two capes in the transport.

"Arc, meet Murphy", he said as he introduced me to a large, heavyset young man who looked to be around thirty or so wearing no mask but with a suit that seemed to be covered by images of danger signs in every language that I had ever heard of.

"Good to meet you Murphy. No mask, is that your real name?" All three of the other capes just stared at me.

"You really haven't been keeping up with capes at all, have you, Arc?" said Red Cross. "Murphy's real name is Murphy, he had his name legally changed a couple years ago, when he stopped trying to maintain his secret identity." Murphy coughed into his hand, Red Cross looked at him and something unspoken passed between them. "Right. I'll let him tell you the rest after I tell you about myself and introduce you to Bookie. Murphy's a hard act to follow"

"Good to meet you Arc. I hope you don't know me?" said the last cape in the transport, who was wearing a simple black full body suit with full face mask.

"No clue who you are, Bookie." I replied, wondering why it would matter if I knew him or not.

"I'll let Red Cross tell you about himself before I tell you about myself, and Murphy can follow us. Then we'll want to hear about you. All three of us are a regular part of Endbringer defenses, as support, if you are wondering why we want to know all about you." Bookie said.

Dragon cleared her throat and said "Just to be sure you understand, Arc, since you know almost nothing about capes. When Endbringers attack, almost all capes, no matter what their history might be, will be accepted. There are exceptions like the Slaughterhouse 9 or criminals who have escaped while in transit to the Bird Cage. Bookie and Murphy are not villains, but they are not exactly on the right side of the law either. You should limit what you tell them only to things related to your powers and cape-related experiences, if you want to maintain a secret identity, which I'll want to talk to you about in a little bit anyway."

"I see." I said, trying to remember again if I had ever heard of either of them, but still drawing a blank.

Dragon spoke up once more. "I will vouch for both of them Arc, for as long as Behemoth is attacking, they will be on the side of the white hats, I've worked with Bookie on fourteen different attacks, and Murphy on ten. Neither of them have ever so much as told a lie between reporting for duty and being returned home after an Endbringer attack."

"We sort of like civilization, and think it's worth keeping around." Bookie said, and Murphy nodded.

"Toilet paper and air conditioning are kind of nice, aren't they?" I said, testing to see how the others would react. Everyone smiled and Red Cross chuckled before continuing to talk.

"Well, I'll get this started." Red Cross said. "I'm a medical tinker. Give me a lab, tools, and a medical problem, and I can cobble up anything from an articulated wrist splint to an artificial large intestine that will actually digest food. I am also a practicing general practitioner, and work triage in medical facilities during Endbringer attacks when I don't need to be making medical equipment. This lets me recognize almost immediately when a patient will need something special from me."

"Ah, so you will want to know if I have any special organs or physiology, so you can be more ready tinker up things than can keep me alive." I guessed.

"Exactly. You seem to have a normal human skeleton, but while you are wearing that suit I can't tell much more than that with a casual visual inspection. Anything I should know about, either for the body I see now, or the one from the race track?"

"Hrm, the only thing I've been able to tell is that the conductivity of my skin and blood is about the same as gold. Possibly other body parts too. Not easy to test more than that." I considered. "Well, not easy for me to test more than that." Red Cross grinned. I continued. "My other body doesn't have a biology that I can tell, it seems to be a pure electromagnetic construct of some sort. But I'll be happy to submit myself to testing if you want to tinker up some diagnostic tools, for both my real body and my fake one, provided I can be tested while my real body is concealed."

"Fair enough, with that bit of information I can cobble up enough diagnostic equipment to at least start understanding your physiology, in case we need to know how to put the pieces back together," he said.

"OK, when we hit the ground then?" I asked.

"Nah. Sooner. After you get done talking with Bookie and Murphy I'll have a few things to get started with, to better define what specific tools I'll need to get the data we need. You're up Bookie." Then he turned and detached several small containers and what looked like a lap desk from his large pack.

I continued to watch out of curiosity as he turned back to face us and started assembling some amazing looking gizmos on the lap desk, some attaching directly to the lap desk, which were obviously tools, and others which he used the tools to manipulate. Bookie and Murphy were watching too.

"Pretty amazing to watch a Tinker do his thing, isn't it?" Bookie said as he watched. "Red Cross is a good sort, not super protective of his tech. Something to do with being a real doctor I suspect. He makes all sorts of gizmos and would probably be one of the richest capes on the planet, if he didn't give away most of what he made at cost. I happen to know that he and Dragon work together to build simplified versions of his tinker "toys" that don't require constant tinkering to keep them running."

"Correct" Dragon said, and Red Cross looked up long enough to nod his head as well.

"Well, my turn. My power is pretty simple to describe." Said Bookie. "I can calculate the odds on any given fight, win, loss, or draw, with a rough idea of what people can do, the expected strategies, the terrain, and some video footage or just my memories of having seem them fight. The more accurate the data I have is, the better my odds calculations are. I also have a 'sixth sense' about how accurate my data is."

I thought about it a bit and said "OK, so it's your job to help formulate strategy in the face of what you know about the Endbringers and Capes that we bring to the fight then?"

"Close. There are usually several of us thinkers and tinkers who work together to try to maximize our effectiveness. I frequently work with Dragon to get recon data, and there are lots of thinkers who can provide me with specific information that can help me refine win percentages. I provide my numbers to other thinkers that create actual plans."

"OK, I see then, I think. You don't provide strategy or tactics, you evaluate them based on what you know, and the more you know the more accurate your predictions can be. That in turn helps the strategists and tacticians develop their ideas."

"Exactly, and you are an unknown, so I'll definitely want to learn more about your powers. On that note, I think it's a good point for Murphy to introduce himself."

I looked over to Murphy, who was grinning widely and reached out his hand to shake. I met him halfway with the handshake and he started talking.

"Glad to see you are apparently one of the ones that just tries to tune capes out of their lives, rather than a moron like I was dreading." He said, and then he apologized. "Sorry, it isn't often that I meet someone who doesn't know who I am."

"No problem. Before I got these powers, I just…"

Dragon broke in. "Arc, remember, stick to business, for now. Based on what I've read in your document, you don't want a relationship with these guys other than when you fight Endbringers or maybe other s-class threats"

"Sorry about that Dragon." Murphy said, "I wasn't trying to draw out data, just trying to make conversation. And figure out where to start."

"Understood Murphy. No harm done, and I might even be wrong about his predilection towards being one of the white hats, but if so, it's not like Arc can't find you any time he wants, just like anyone else."

"Fair enough, but as I said, I wasn't trying to draw out data or recruit. You know I work alone anyway, and I know full well that you know why." Murphy turned away from addressing the front of the vessel where Dragon's speaking system was, and continued addressing me.

"Ever heard of Murphy's Law, Arc?" Murphy asked.

"Sure, anything that can go wrong will go wrong." I replied. Then I made the connection. "Oh. Umm, are we safe flying in this thing?"

"I am." Murphy said. Chances are pretty good that you are too. My power isn't an exact parallel to Murphy's Law, but it's got a lot in common with it. Any threat to me is countered. Say you shoot a bullet at me. My power somehow alters reality to remove the threat to me. Sometimes it's a simple thing like a gust of wind blowing a bullet very slightly to the side so it misses me, or it might be a meteor the size of a barn that hits a ten story apartment building two blocks away from me, creating a fountain of debris and dead bodies. The torso of a three year old from the exploding building might block the bullet meant for me."

"Oh shit, that actually happened. I remember it." I said, starting to get angry, then saw the pain on his face and though about how he said what he had said. "You don't have any control over it at all?"

"Like I said, glad you are a smart one. I have absolutely zero control over my power. I tried for years to figure out a way to control it, because I wanted to be a hero cape. When that failed, I tried for years to find a way to kill myself. Nothing worked. So now I hire myself out for parahuman power and tinker or conventional weapons testing. I figure someday, someone might test a power or ability on me that can actually kill me. I try to stay as far away from civilization as I can when actually testing, preferring Bouvet Island to test on but I live in Gaston."

Red Cross interjected. "The volcano became active again because he got cold."

Murphy looked at Red Cross. "Yes, true." A pause. "Red, I don't have secrets, he can look up all kinds of stuff about me later, or you can tell him if you want, but right now let me tell him my way." Red nodded and apologized.

"Is that why you come to Endbringer fights? You hope one of them can kill you?" I said, carefully watching his face.

"He frowned. I tried that. It doesn't work. My power can't directly affect the Endbringers, for some reason, but it can alter reality to bring me whatever assistance is required for me to survive their attacks. I ended up killing several hundred people by trying my power against Leviathan. I went in alone, in a zodiac, to test my power against his, and all the other defenders stayed back to give my power space. Leviathan saw me, started an attack on me, and Siberian popped up out of nowhere between myself and Leviathan. Siberian parted Leviathan's water shadow just by being in front of me, so it missed me, and the impact of Leviathan's physical attack hitting Siberian created a compressed air wave that blew me and the inflatable boat several hundred feet, the boat lost its motor and the inflated sections wrapped around me so that I was unhurt when it bounced across the water like a skipping stone, and I kept going another several hundred feet, ending up about a thousand feet from Leviathan. Siberian was waiting for me there, unwrapped me from the boat, pulled off my mask and looked at me a couple seconds, but didn't attack, she just left and did not help fight Leviathan other than whatever she did after Leviathan hit her. Later that year, the Slaughterhouse 9 came to my hometown and tried to recruit me. I refused. They tried to kill me, but barely managed to keep from killing one another, time after time until they gave up. They had a great deal of "fun" trying to figure out how my power worked, and how to get around it. The more people died while they were experimenting, the better. When they got bored, they killed everyone who was still alive within a mile of me and dropped the corpses around me in a circle. My wife and both kids were in that circle."

"Holy shit man." I whispered, looking him in the eyes, and seeing the pain there. "So you wear that suit and don't hide your identity, so that people avoid you unless they have a strong reason to approach you?"

"Exactly, he whispered, then said "It's been two years since my wife and kids died. I can't go after the Slaughterhouse 9 because if I do, my power will kill so many other innocents that I would never be able to stay sane. I tried. Once." He clenched his fists. "I bought a set of tinker armor and gear, and went hunting Jack. When I found him, we fought for a bit and for the first few minutes of the fight, my power was mostly using the various different tinker equipment in the suit to protect me and attack Jack and the others. The suit eventually fell apart from the abuse of both my power and the Slaughterhouse 9's successful hits that damaged the suit but wouldn't have hurt me. Then my power had to start reaching farther from me to protect me. Jack tried to cut me after the suit had fallen apart and a school bus full of children drove off an overpass to block Jack's view of me. Fourteen kids and the driver of the bus died. Jack's knives didn't kill them, the impact and fire did. My power killed fifteen people while I was trying to get revenge for my wife and kids and neighbors and friends." He clenched is eyes and fists, then opened his eyes again through tears and looked at me with a fierce gaze. "Then Jack said that he considered me an honorary member of the Slaughterhouse 9, and hoped we would cross paths again. The rest of them fucking saluted me at his command and some of them actually looked like they respected me. That day nearly broke my mind."

"I don't have anything to say to you that could possibly make a difference, other than that I hope you find peace someday. Murphy." I said.

"Thanks. I tell you this much about myself so that you understand how dangerous I am. I have dedicated myself to three things. One is my own death. I am too dangerous to live. The second is the end of the Slaughterhouse 9, and the last is the preservation of civilization from the Endbringers. I'll settle for any of the three." He paused, looked me in the eyes, put on a painful looking grin under the tears, and continued "Toilet paper and air conditioning are nice." And then he looked down, hiding his face and eyes, and a couple seconds later, in a quieter voice said "So are kids and wives."

Red Cross looked at me and we were both tearing up a bit. Bookie had suspicious dark spots on his mask. I looked at Murphy and there just weren't words to say.


	3. Chapter 3

All rights to the material contained within belong to the author of the original work, which can be found at www dot parahumans dot wordpress dot com (strange formatting had to be used to unbreak whatever the editor is doing to the link)

I am only having fun playing in Wildbow's Universe, I have no claim of ownership, past, present, or future on any character or literary element here, including characters or literary elements that I create myself.

*********Third Draft (I do welcome suggestions - it's been 25 years or so since I took English classes)*************

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Red Cross caught my eye and made a brief beckoning gesture with his hand. I moved to the seat next to him his substantial pile of gizmos and gadgets.

"While we let Murphy pull himself together, let's start with some testing. You said that you can separate yourself into two parts, one that is some sort of electromagnetic projection, right?"

"Yes, I can do that. Do you want me to separate now?" I asked?

Red Cross looked over at Murphy, obviously thinking, but before he could say anything, Dragon broke in quietly.

"No, I don't think it would be a good idea to introduce anything into the area around Murphy right now that might even be considered a potential threat by his passenger. I just watched ten falcons simultaneously take out ten ducks that were nowhere near the shuttle. His mood can affect his power's defensiveness, and it seems to be on a hair trigger if it's attacking ducks 500 feet away from the shuttle's air intakes."

"Roger that", Red Cross said quietly.

"Ah, sorry about that." muttered Murphy, then he continued. "Give me a minute or two more and I'll be a bit more calm. We're not due to land for another few minutes yet, right?"

"We've got about ten minutes left." Dragon said.

Murphy nodded, then sat up straight in his chair and started looking out the window, ignoring us for the time being.

"Well, I can perform tests on you with your projection in its rest state, and it shouldn't be a problem. Unless your projection has involuntary reactions?"

"Not unless you count burning my carpet when I feed it too much." I said with a grin.

Red Cross laughed quietly. "Can you detect when it is feeding, how much power it is absorbing?"

"Yes, but mainly by how my perceptions shift from my point of view in the other body. Unless you have very high powered equipment there, you won't have enough power to be anything resembling a problem in just a few minutes."

"Fair enough. We should be good then." And then for the next five minutes or so, at his direction I did lots of stuff that was fairly similar to what one would normally do in a doctor's office, except the tools he used on me were fantastically complex.

"You don't even need to do most of this 'doctor' act do you? " I asked.

He looked up at me from where he had been monitoring a screen while I was doing some simple isometric exercises and grinned. "Nope. But some of it is needed. Doctors frequently use a little bit of 'stage magic' to help set the tone and relax patients during an examination. You've been a pretty good patient though, I suspect I could have done it all matter-of-fact and there would have been no issue, but habits are hard to break."

"So how long do I have doc?" I asked, grinning back at him.

"Baseline, looks like another 70 or so years. Unless you get hit by a bus or something. It's pretty obvious that you've been the recent beneficiary of Dorathea's regeneration, which basically put you back into perfect health. Nobody's as healthy as you are, and Dorathea's healing has a very easy to spot signature, with these tools." And then he continued. "On that note I'm going to ask you something. How much does maintaining a secret identity mean to you?"

"Umm, well, I've always been a private person. I don't really have any desire to be some sort of public hero or something, like the ones with no secret identity"

"Then you have a problem. You see, I already know who you are, and I'm no thinker. Nor am I one of the cape-detectives either." He said, with a lopsided grin. "Dragon, I imagine that you've already considered how to bring this up, since we've seen it before. Care to take it from here?"

"Wait a second. How do you know who I am?" I asked him.

"It's pretty simple really. I don't know your name, but there was an electrocution survivor a week ago, the victim was healed by Dorathea. Cape powers are frequently related in some way to the events which triggered them, and your trigger event and your powers as you describe them practically point to each other with blinking neon lights." After taking a breath, he continued. "I've got an advantage over most people in the world, because I happen to work in that hospital and I heard about your case, but I'm willing to bet that if we looked on the internet, people are already close to figuring out who you are," He continued.

"Ah, actually, I just checked, and there are two separate cape detectives that have already ID'ed you, Arc." Dragon said. "Driving your own truck to the field, pretty much gave them what they needed to pin you down. You do not have a secret identity, I'm afraid." After a pause, Dragon continued. "Even without the information you provided me, they were able to put all the puzzle pieces together after you left your truck here. Putting an expired tag on the truck that you picked up from a junkyard, or wherever didn't make a difference, they just got your truck's VIN, and checked that against vehicle tax records, and there was a drone over your house fifteen minutes after we took off. Right now the drone is showing a video of the kiln you built, and someone is commenting on video zooming in on burnt grass footsteps and sprinklers set up around the kiln."

A monitor blinked a couple times to draw my attention, and I watched while someone's flying remote with a camera attached got some pictures around the kiln in my back yard. I was a little bit shocked. "Umm, wow. People actually care that much about who capes are that they are that aggressive in figuring out who we are?"

"Yessir" Bookie said. "Capes are celebrities, and people always dig deep for all the dirt on celebrities."

"Spilt milk then, guess I move on." And then I realized. "Oh. Let me take off this damn suit then" and proceeded to rid myself of the faraday suit.

"You aren't wearing that for any utility reason, just for concealment? Why not just a ski mask and loose clothing or something – at least till you get a better costume together?" Came from Murphy, unexpectedly.

"Well, I had it, it was a full body protective suit, and fairly durable. I really wasn't thinking that far ahead though, I suppose. It's also pretty restrictive and hard to run in." Then I thought about who we were going to go fight. "The way I understand it, it's good to NOT be the slowest person running from Behemoth."

Murphy managed a chuckle at that. "Aye, there's a lot of black humor about running away from Behemoth, that's for sure, and from time to time, some capes have been seen making sure that someone else is slower than them. Ah, it's not a good idea to be seen doing that. Accidents tend to happen shortly afterwards."

"Not my style anyhow" I said.

"Glad to hear it." Murphy replied. Then he continued. "You done with your tests, Red? Mind if I talk a bit more to Arc here?"

"Go ahead Murphy, floor's yours, probably safer to do the rest of the tests on Arc when he's separated from his projection while he's on the ground. Between your power and Dragon's flight control systems, we probably don't want to take a risk."

Murphy's eyebrows raised "Hadn't even considered what my power might do if it considered Arc a risk to the flight control systems."

"Ahh, could we perhaps move onto another topic?" I said. "Promise I won't let the spark out."

"'Arc & Spark' I like it!", Red and Bookie both said at the same time, then looked at each other and chuckled.

"Well, when I got sidetracked a while ago, I was about to get to what I actually do at these Endbringer events. It's pretty much the same thing as what I do for a living otherwise. I let people try to hurt me with their powers or gizmos. Various organizations supply piles of old tinker gear and raw materials around me, so my power won't have far to pull protection from. Dragon here keeps a couple transports well stocked with the broken bits and pieces of other tinkers' gear, sheet metal, cloth, wires, etc. and we use that for testing at Endbringer events."

He took a breath and continued. "When we're done testing, Dragon and other tinkers tend to play around with stuff I used to protect myself. Every now and then, in addition to allowing capes the chance to see what their power or new tinker toy can do, and how it can be defended against, my power generates a combination of technologies that actually proves useful. Defiant is usually one of the first picking through the gear after testing. He's uncanny in how he can zoom in on things that have been modified by my power."

I looked at him a, a bit confused. "So, in a little while, I'm, uh…"

"Going to be attacking me." He finished for me. "And we can get a good idea of what your power does, and how it works that way."

"How likely is it that your power is going to seriously injure me? There are going to be a lot of capes around. Wouldn't want Scion to show up, accidentally turn me into ashes, then wander off to look for Behemoth."

"Highly unlikely. While I'm calm, my power tends to use the simplest, easiest, and closest method to defend me. That's the reason for my pile of tinker refuse and scrap materials around me. When I get emotional, then it can start to get extravagant. The more emotional I am, the more proactive my power gets, as well. My power doesn't typically directly attack people, unless attacking them is the only way to stop an attack that would otherwise harm me. When people are injured by my power, it's normally due to them being in the way of my power protecting me. There are exceptions..." He started to zone out again and looked out the window for a second then snapped back to focus his attention to me again. "We also typically keep a healer of some sort around, just in case."

"Fair enough. Not like as if I'm going to be living a boring life from here on out anyway, especially with no secret identity. Wish I'd thought through all that stuff a bit better." I said with a shrug.

Dragon interjected. "Don't think it would have mattered in the end, Arc, Looking at the timestamps and whatnot of some of the posts related to you and what they were discussing, your power being such a close match for your trigger event, and your trigger event being a public event with witnesses, after your appearance at the race track there were half a dozen folks out there working together to prove who you were already. They were just having a bit of difficulty getting your name from the hospital, and your co-workers were not cooperating with them in the least. You have some good friends." She showed a short video of a thin guy with long red hair, a flannel shirt, fairly worn out jeans, and a green ball cap with a deer image on it, the cap worn backwards, his back turned, holding his middle finger in the air as he walked away. "Eventually though, it would have come out. Public trigger events with closely matching visible powers almost always become public."

I laughed at the image. "Just like Jake. I owe him a beer or three next time I see him."

Dragon paused a second. "Well right now I need you guys to all get ready to land. Not a lot of turbulence today, but at the very least we need to stow Arc's suit and Red Cross's equipment."

"Bagging my tools now." Red Cross said as he finished rolling up a long strip of foam with tools laying on it, and put the roll in a bag, then secured the bag to his bigger bag that was already secure.

"Where do you want it?" I asked. "Looks like there's storage under the seats."

"That works, it should fit under your own seat."

"Done, and Done" I said as I gathered the suit, unlatched and lifted the seat top, then tossed the suit into the bin under the seat, and let the seat back down, latching it in place again.

"Buckle up boys. Time to land."

After we had all checked our buckles, the shuttle began a rapid descent, and settled to a stop very quickly. Almost no hovering, just a straight acceleration, almost like a fast elevator.

"You're one hell of a pilot Dragon." I said.

"I write good flight software", she replied.

"No difference in the end, right? Everything's fly by wire these days." I quipped back.

"I suppose you're right." she said with a chuckle.

"Dragon, anyone around that I should know to avoid?" Said Murphy as he left the shuttle.

"Not yet Murphy. I've got your area set up to the South of here , and already marked off. I've already let HQ know you were inbound. We've got a couple others that want to test out a few new tricks, but Arc's our only new cape that I've been made aware of."

I turned to Murphy. "Enemies?"

"What?" he said, turning a bit towards me with a puzzled look. "Oh, no. People I should avoid so I don't hurt them simply by getting close to them. Mostly precogs and battle thinkers. If their power is a predictive power that looks at potential events that surround other people, they really don't like to be anywhere near me. The stronger their predictive power, the worse it is for them. Contessa once described me as a 'bad acid trip on two legs' as she walked away from me with a spontaneous bloody nose. I just give most other predictive capes a headache by proximity, but it can be pretty bad for them if they try to predict events that include me. My power is not predictable if I'm in a fight. It's moderately predictable if I'm calm and relaxed, but still erratic enough to cause capes that predict actions to not want to be near me."

"Not all thinkers who predict events involving capes are affected though." I said while looking at Bookie as he walked towards a large building that looked like an old grocery store, with a banner marked "HQ" next to the entrance.

"Oh, heh, Bookie explained that to me once. He predicts outcomes, not individual events or actions. Whenever he looks at me and compares me with anyone else, he sees 100% victory for me, or a draw. He doesn't get any sense of how the fight would actually occur, just that I won't lose." He paused. "But sometimes the price is too high."

We walked in silence towards Murphy's little testing facility, Him thinking private thoughts, and I let him think them, because it really wasn't that hard to guess what they might be. After we got close to the marked entrance, I started noticing all the Peligro! Danger! Gefhar! Kitai! and other signs that I guessed meant 'danger' mounted all over the place on the fences surrounding a baseball field with a big pile of junk in the middle of the field. As we approached a few people by one of the dugout entrances, Murphy shook his head gathered himself a bit, and strode forward a bit to talk to some people.

"Let me make some introductions" said Murphy. "Everyone meet Arc. He's new, and I'll be his first live target. Most of you know the drill. We'll go over it after some quick introductions."

"Glad to see you again Panacea, hope we won't need your services today but thank you for coming." The young woman looked at Murphy and frowned, then said "Murphy what the hell are you trying to do to yourself?" and reached towards him.

"No young lady, I do NOT want your help. The arteriosclerosis and lung cancer you see developing is intentional. Environmental injury that is passively inflicted on myself by things which my body craves is the only way I've found to get me closer to one of my goals. Don't go messing it up."

"You know it won't work, right? When your power detects you are about to die, it'll drop you in some healer's living room with a few alarm clocks going off around you or something. Or it might even drag someone else to you. Seeing your condition like this, I'm going to have to be careful to wear sturdy pajamas in case your power decides to drag me out of bed at 3AM someday."

"My choice. Besides, you don't necessarily have to wear sturdy pajamas to bed, I wouldn't mind if you showed up in whatever eighteen year olds wear to bed these days."

"You bastard." She said. Then she punched him right in the nose. Hard. He saw it coming and started grinning, obviously thinking she was faking it, since she obviously knew about his power.

Then the punch connected, and Murphy fell flat on his ass, managing to catch himself with his arms splayed behind himself before he rolled onto his back. His eyes were about as big as teacups as he stared at her.

Every other cape was staring at Panacea and Murphy, and without exception they were frozen in place, on edge, waiting for something to happen that they could react to.

"How in the hell did you do that? Did you figure out how to turn off my power without triggering it?" Murphy asked quietly. He wasn't mad, he was actually happy, and starting to grin as he stood up and brushed off his suit. He wiped his nose and there was a little blood on his hand, but his nose wasn't bleeding any longer.

Panacea was grinning. "No, Murphy, that was just a bit of old school religious healing."

Several of the nearby capes that were just staring at the two of them, ready to react to anything, relaxed a bit and started laughing nervously when they finally figured out what had just happened.

I couldn't help but laugh. Murphy looked confused for a second then he got it. His grin turned lopsided and shook his head. "Do you know how many fried peanut butter sandwiches and cheap cigars you just wasted?" Then he pulled a little cigar out of his pocket and lit it, inhaling deeply and blowing out some smoke rings. "Now I have to start all over again. Seriously, please, don't do that again Panacea."

She looked defiantly at him. "No Deal. I see you trying to kill yourself again, I'll healing punch you again. Harder next time."

"Fine. This will be my last time coming to an Endbringer event then. People with more respect for my wishes will be welcome to meet me for testing elsewhere, if they want. Thank you for caring Panacea, but you don't understand." His mouth set into a firm line and he straightened up his back a bit, then turned his back on her and walked onto the field through the little gate by the dugout. "Give me a couple minutes to calm down before we start testing please. Arc, you're on your own a few minutes. Having an Endbringer nearby is bad enough, we don't need any falling satellites or meteors.

The laughing capes stopped laughing and quickly looked up at the sky.

"It still won't work Murphy, you know that, don't you?" Panacea said quietly, as he walked away.

"No, I don't know that, Panacea, and I don't like people making important decisions for me. Drop it." He said with finality as he walked out of easy hearing distance.

"I wish you had asked me before you tried that." said a cape about my own age nearby. "I could have told you what his reaction would have been."

"I knew what his reaction would be, before I did it." She said. "And it doesn't matter. He's not the only cape in the world with powers that make it hard to work with others, and he does a lot to help even with the restrictions he forces on himself. I'm a healer, and I don't let people die if I can help it."

The middle aged looking cape reached his right hand out towards me and I took the handshake. "Welcome to being a cape, Arc."

"Ah, thank you…" I said, drawing out the response, waiting for him to insert his own name.

He looked a bit confused at first until he realized what I was doing and looked a bit surprised. "Excuse my manners, Arc, I rarely ever meet someone who doesn't know who I am. I'm Eidolon."

"Good to meet you Eidolon. Sorry I don't know much about capes. Never bothered keeping up with you guys. Not many names I recognize, and only one costume I'd probably recognize. I recognize your name, if that's any consolation."

"I suppose that'll have to do then, he said with a grin. Breath of fresh air, having someone not recognize me I suppose. I'd guess that the one costume that you would recognize would be Scion?"

"Ah, no. I recognize his name, though." I said.

Now Eidolon looked really confused. "Wait. Whose costume would you recognize then?"

I realized I had backed myself into a bit of an embarrassing corner, but before I could say anything, a short thin girl with a mask who was walking by us accompanied by a couple other young kids in costume started laughing hysterically and said "Slinki. The only cape whose costume he recognizes is Slinki." Then she looked at me again and said. "Sorry. It's not very often that people catch me off guard. My name's Tattletale. I owe you one for embarrassing you like that, but it looks like we probably won't be working together much except when fighting Endbringers, so you will have to settle for a 'Sorry.' You really do need to learn about capes though, especially if you're a new one and you want to live."

"Fair enough, Tattletale. I'll take that apology. I suspect that being embarrassed is one of the less worrisome things I'll have to worry about as a cape with no secret identity."

"Truth. OK, gotta run, need to meet up to help with planning. She turned to the others with her. "Sorry, couldn't resist, lets move." And they walked away as a group.

Eidolon still looked a bit confused. "Who is Slinki?" It was my turn to stare at him, damn near every man with an interest in women knew who Slinki was. She was bigger on the entertainment scene than Marilyn Monroe had been in the generation before ours.

Looking at him he seemed to be about the right age. "Do you remember the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" from the late 1980's?

"Vaguely, but yes." he said.

"Think Jessica Rabbit"

His eyes narrowed a bit then he busted out laughing. OK, that explains it. Capes with noncombat abilities tend to slip under my radar, but I have to agree with you that her costume is rather impressive.

Panacea huffed, and turned her back. "Men. Dirty old men."

Everyone laughed. Even Panacea after a few seconds.

After that the rest introduced themselves. Defiant was there to test a couple of his newest weapons and then sort through whatever was left after testing. Eidolon was there to make sure no asteroids, meteors, or skyscrapers dropped on our heads. A kid with some guns who called himself "Kid Win" was also there to test some of his newer gadgets. Another kid named "Waterweird" wanted to test out a new way to use his power. Panacea was there to put people back together if Murphy's power ended up hurting someone. She moved a substantial distance away with another cape called "Glory Girl" who was apparently going to act as a bodyguard for Panacea when Murphy's power started doing things.

Murphy called out. "OK, who's first?"

Eidolon said "I am. Not to test my power, but to test your mood and your power, Murphy."

"Fair Enough." Murphy said.

Eidolon looked at the ground nearby, and gestured with a fist, and several cubic yards of dirt were excavated in a single piece. He dropped the dirt near Murphy and pointed at the two dugouts, taking them apart like a slow motion explosion, all the bricks flying apart simultaneously, then using them rapidly to brick in the hole he had just dug. The mortar shimmered a bit, and appeared liquid briefly while the bricks wriggled around a bit and then everything settled into place solidly. Then Eidolon gestured at the roadway a few hundred feet away and one of the heavy steel sheets that are used for covering roadwork floated through the air to the new bunker. Finally, he gestured at a nearby building made of concrete and a bunch of rebar pulled slowly out of the wall, creating little puffs of dust, but none of the flying shards of concrete I was half expecting when I saw what he was starting to do. He drove the rebar into the ground around the plate of steel and bent the rebar into a woven net over the top of the steel plate, which would keep the plate from sliding and falling into the bunker. "Everyone in except me and Murphy. Give Panacea and Glory Girl the section with the narrow cut in the wall."

Panacea got herself into the slot in the wall, and Glory Girl positioned herself in front of it. Everyone else just took a seat.

A few seconds later there was the unmistakable sound of metal hitting metal. Hard. Hard enough that the sound was a sharp pain. The sound immediately stopped as soon as it started, and Eidolon called out. "OK, all's well. Defiant, we've all seen this before except Arc, do you have a camera I could hold that can video link to his smartphone so he can see what happens?"

Defiant looked a bit annoyed, briefly, but shrugged and said "Sure" and asked me to hand him my smartphone. He looked at the model, downloaded an app onto it, linked his camera to my phone through the app and put a little repeater at the entrance of the tunnel, and after dropping the repeater, tossed the camera at Eidolon, who caught it without even looking at it. Then said "Good to go." It took him about one minute total, most of that time spent waiting for the app to download. I was moderately impressed.

So I got to watch as Kid Win went out, set up a gun, and Eidolon stood right beside him. I could see the scrap around Murphy shift slightly as Kid Win started powering up his gun. I wordlessly held out the smartphone a bit into Defiant's apparent field of view and tapped the edge of it to get his attention. He turned to me briefly, shook his head, tapped his visor, and I briefly saw the same scene I was looking at as the visor's transparency altered a bit then reverted to it's previous state, except with lots of annotations appearing on the screen around Murphy and Kid Win that I couldn't read. So I held out the phone to Waterweird who moved a bit closer to watch, and Glory Girl who shook her head slightly and sat up a bit straighter to protect Panacea a bit more thoroughly.

So a few seconds passed with Kid Win tinkering with his guns, he looked at Eidolon, got a "go ahead" nod, and then, his guns fired a long, continuous stream of balls of energy that looked like roman candle bolts, except they orbited each other and created a helix effect in the air with their passage. As soon as Kid Win's guns started firing, a strangely textured purple field of energy formed around Murphy, and we could feel a rumble in the ground as the field apparently absorbed the blast from the guns. Some pretty spectacular fireworks. Defiant muttered something about high energy states from Kid Win's weapon being absorbed by the field and redistributed into the tectonic plates, then he transmitted to Dragon. "Tectonic disturbance from Murphy not Behemoth."

Kid Win came in, preoccupied, guns half disassembled in a baseball bat bag, tapping at a small tablet computer, preoccupied enough that when he sat down he missed the bench and almost fell over. Glory Girl laughed at that, Kid Win caught himself and grinned, then seated himself and continued poking away at the tablet, preoccupied.

Waterweird was next. As he stood, his body started to shift and in a matter of a few seconds, before he had even left the shelter, where there was once a five and a half foot tall young teenage kid with a bit of acne, there was now a five and a half foot tall humanoid wave. If you have ever seen one of the cartoon humanoid fires with arms and legs on Saturday morning cartoons, that's what he looked like, except water, not fire. He stood next to Eidolon and started to concentrate. The pile of scrap around Murphy started to shift again. Eidolon put his hand in front of Waterweird's face, a couple feet away and obviously started counting down with his fingers, while looking at Murphy carefully. When his count reached one he pulled his hand back, and said a word, and Waterweird created in front of him what appeared to be a Chinese dragon, made of water. The dragon and Waterweird actually talked to one another briefly before the dragon turned away from him and moved a few paces to the left so that neither Eidolon, Waterweird, nor the bunker were in a line between Murphy and itself.

The water dragon looked directly away from Murphy as well, presumably scanning for others in a potential line of fire. Then the dragon opened its mouth, and a fog came out. The fog drifted forward and back from the dragon, creating a tube shape about fifty feet long, then the tube froze solid. More water formed into ice around the barrel, making it about ten feet thick. Then I realized what the dragon was doing. It was making a cannon - a big cannon. Eidolon was frowning, and talking to Waterweird, who nodded and said something to the dragon, which stopped what it was doing. Eidolon pulled a few more metal sheets off the road construction and shaped them into an aboveground shelter, and it was apparent that Eidolon was holding control over the metal, as it was constantly flexing a bit as if Eidolon were constantly shaping it for best effect.

Then Eidolon nodded at Waterweird again, and he gave another command to the dragon, who jumped up into the breach of the ice cannon, sealed itself in, and then the inside of the breech of the cannon began to shine. A few seconds later, there was a loud "Blaaat" noise and there was a massive plume of steam and dust that formed instantly between the gun and Murphy. Waterweird collapsed to his knees and was helped back up by Eidolon, but seemed tired, not hurt. The steam trail from the broken and melting cannon was rapidly sucked into a round black field with stars visible in it. The cannon chunks simply lay on the ground, melting. No sign of the dragon. Murphy was standing, undisturbed, with the round black field in front of him, wrapped in a clear crystalline formation that started crumbling away from him a second or two after the black field sucked up the last of the water vapor and imploded on itself with a pop. Eidolon helped Waterweird walk back to the bunker, while simultaneously flattening the extra sheets of plate steel he had been holding as a shield against the (apparently expected) explosion of the ice cannon, and stacking them nearby. While Waterweird was walking and back to the bunker, he returned to human form. Panacea touched Waterweird when he entered the bunker, and muttered something about acne and junk food, but otherwise didn't seem concerned.

Defiant muttered something about hypervelocity ice particles travelling in vacuum bubbles being shunted into outer space. Unknown destination. He muttered something else about a starfield match and I heard Dragon's name mentioned.

I asked Defiant if he wanted me to go first, since he was apparently doing a lot of analysis, and it might be easier for him to go last so he wouldn't have to set up his monitoring equipment again after his turn, before mine. He actually grinned and said "Thanks, yes, I'd appreciate that." And gave me a thumbs up. Eidolon nodded in agreement and we both stepped out of the bunker. He asked me what my power was and I told him "I have a second body that is electromagnetic, but it consumes electricity. I need to feed it before I can test it in at any significant power level." He nodded, then pointed to where the nearest of the field lights were, and we walked over to the base of the light.

Eidolon held out his fingers and unscrewed the covers over the base, which surprised me because I figured he would have just ripped them off. Apparently I was a bit transparent in my confusion. He commented, "I will put everything back the way it was. No need to make it harder. Fine metal is harder to mold with telekinetics than big chunks of rock, dirt and sheet steel, or even mortar state changes."

When the wiring was exposed, I reached out to touch it and he put his hand in front of the wiring. "Wait. Explain. You said your other body consumes electricity. Where is your other body, and why are you trying to touch the wiring."

"Oh, sorry." I keep the other body inside of me normally. When it's inside of me I only think thoughts as an individual, and see things mostly with a single perception. When the other body is separated, so are my perceptions. I've learned a bit about how to control the worst of the confusion, and I can close my eyes to keep myself with a single source of visual input, but the electromagnetic body can't feed itself, I have to feed it by channeling electricity through or very near to my body."

"Fair Enough, so explain what you plan to do, so I can stop you from turning into crispy bacon if something goes wrong. Do you experience any pain when feeding electricity to your other body? What should I look for to save you from yourself if you start to look distressed?" Eidolon was watching me carefully as he said this.

"No pain, and not sure what you could do other than simply knock me away from the power source like you would any other victim of electrical entrapment, with something nonconductive, which I imagine it pretty easy for a telekinetic." I said, shrugging. "I'm still learning my powers, but I haven't had any problems feeding my second body yet. This is more than household current though, so having you nearby is comforting"

Eidolon thought for a second then said "OK, please show me your second body, before we get started, so I know what it looks like."

I said "Sure thing." Then I walked my spark out of my body and asked Eidolon if he could see it. He said no, so I told him that after I took in a bit of energy he would be able to see it. "It's visible in UV light but not human normal vision when it's at very low power", I continued.

After a few seconds he commented, "Ah, OK, I see it now. Crude humanoid shape." Then he paused. "No sensory organs to speak of and no thumbs." Must be a bit of a pain when you want to do fine manipulation from a distance."

"Aye, right in one. Should we get started now?" I asked.

"Sure, just listen to what I say. And If I say stop, stop. Both bodies. OK? Murphy is pretty damn dangerous. Even unintentionally. Panacea worked him up a bit too, but he'll forgive her, because she helped heal a whole bunch of people that got hurt around him when the fool went and attacked the Slaughterhouse 9 by himself. He's a good man, but his power is frightening in scope and is not controlled by a human, so can be unspeakably brutal. We risk it carefully to test new things and new capes, because nothing is allowed to hurt him, and it normally doesn't directly target individuals." He stared at me waiting for a response.

"Yes, he already gave me the basics, and a bit of his personal history. Including what happened to his family." I said. Eidolon winced.

"You probably understand more than most then. Go ahead.", and he removed his hand that was blocking me from the wiring.

I reached in, pulled off the layers of heavy vinyl electrical tape and glass tape, then the wire nuts from a couple connections to bypass the fuse box that had its fuses removed. After bending the wires away from each other and the fuse box, I held one wire in one hand, the other in the other, and carefully touched the ends of each wire to the opposite hand in such a way that if either hand started curling it's fingers uncontrollably due to the electricity, it would break the circuit. I had Eidolon behind me, but I had fried my hands last week, and even though they were fully healed, I really didn't want to do it again. When I made the circuit through my body, the effect on my spark was immediate, it was growing rapidly. Much faster power gain than household current. Without tools I couldn't judge the power, but realized that this was an old baseball field, and it quite possibly was running some pretty damn powerful, power hungry old lights. I looked at the rating of the fuses lying in the bottom of the fuse box. Two 30 amp fuses. Lots more power than ever before. But no pain, no discomfort even. My hands didn't even feel warm.

Something tapped my shoulder, but when I turned there was nobody there. It was Eidolon, using telekinesis. When I looked up, he was looking at my other body, which was now about thirty feet tall, and easily viewable in normal daylight by my biological eyes. "How much you planning on feeding it?" He asked. I was a bit startled, as I hadn't intentionally turned off the sight from my other body, I had just been captivated by my own thoughts and didn't notice how the perspective of its vision had changed.

"That's enough I guess. Sorry, was thinking about something. More power in here than I thought." I started putting the wiring back together. Eidolon watched me work. "Electrician?" He said.

"Yup." I agreed. "Used to be one anyway. Not sure if I'll be able to go back to it. No secret identity possible at this point, unless I do some witness protection program, which I don't have much interest in doing. I'm me, and I'll stay me, powers or not."

"Would you want to be an electrician again, even if you could?" Eidolon asked.

"Sure thing. It's something I'm good at, it pays well, and I'm helping the community all rolled into one. But being a cape changes things. I don't want to live a life of danger. I won't put the powers on a shelf though, if I've got them, I'll use them best I can. You know. 'With great power…"

"Stop. Yes. Every cape knows the quote." He said. Both of us chuckled.

"OK, enough." Eidolon looked at Murphy " Murphy is looking impatient, and Defiant is pinging me with 'Hurry Up' messages through my comm, Defiant's got a point. Behemoth has been burrowing around, poking up out of the ground here and there like he's looking for something, which is odd behavior for him. That probably won't last long though, I suspect."

OK, and I started walking my biological body over to where Kid Win and Waterweird had set up. While walking over, I took out my blindfold and started folding it up preparing to put it on. Eidolon looked at me for a second. "Ah. Double vision from different perspectives. Headaches?"

"Yup" I said as I turned towards Murphy and put the blindfold on. Then a bit of humor struck, and I yelled out at Murphy. "Wax On." While waving my right hand in a circle in front of me in a poor approximation of a right hand sweeping block. "Wax Off." While waving my left hand in a circle in front of me. Then I did a really bad imitation of a crane stance, with my arms elevated and my hands turned down, with one leg raised high, knee bent, and the other leg planted with knee almost locked.

Murphy yelled "I watched that movie. You definitely don't fit the part."

From my other body's eyes, I watched Murphy pick up, then throw a small rock at me, which I dodged clumsily, almost falling on my face. Murphy looked puzzled for a second, then looked up and saw my other body looking straight at where Eidolon and I were located. Murphy pointed at my other body, and I heard him say "cheater." Eidolon just shook his head and muttered something about ham, which made me smile.

Kid Win was laughing inside the bunker. Defiant groaned and tried to hush Kid Win. The others in the bunker didn't react to me that I could hear.

"Ready Murphy?" I yelled?

He laughed. "Yup. Ready here." The tinker castoffs and scrap at his feet were agitated like I had seen before, and from my other body's perspective 30 feet up, I could see that it was rapidly assembling a bunch of things together. So his power was definitely precognitive as well as adaptive. It was getting ready for me before I even knew what I would do. How many different possibilities was it preparing for? Or did it already know exactly what I would do? Irrelevant, I suppose.

"Eidolon are we a go?" I asked.

"Yup, all yours."

The grass was burning around my other body's feet. "Eidolon, bit of a fire over there, sorry."

"Got it. There will be more shortly I think." A cloud of dirt settled on the flames, coating the ground with about half an inch of dirt, smothering the fires.

I looked around from my spark, and decided not to make this very complex - this was just a test of basics. I had seen the power of the other attacks directed against Murphy, and I doubted my power even came close to comparing. So I took two steps forward, and then did a controlled sliding collapse to my knees, and with my hands held together, slammed them down on top of where Murphy was standing.

Murphy wasn't there. But there was a golden box that had just formed out of nothing. Big enough for Murphy to be inside it. It had completely resisted my double-fisted overhead blow. I put my right hand on it, and pushed. Nothing. Wouldn't even budge. I picked up some heavy looking nearby scrap, to judge my strength, and it was easy to lift. I then realized that Murphy had probably created a Faraday cage with some sort of alloy, anchored to the ground. Well I knew how to deal with faraday cages. I put one hand on one side of the box, touching it, and one hand on the other, not quite touching it, then carefully started closing the gap and watching carefully to see how the substance would react to a little old fashioned arc welding.

Chaos. I never even saw it coming. One second I was preparing to cut into the Faraday cage, the next I was flying through the air towards my biological body at immense speed. I collapsed into my biological body, which was also flying through the air, spinning. My vision from my biological body returned, and I briefly saw my blindfold fluttering to the ground, burning, next to Eidolon who was skidding along the ground in a controlled slide, leaning towards the source of the blast, with a glowing globe surrounding him.

Time started to slow down. I realized that my clothing was on fire. Probably happened when my supercharged spark passed through my clothing on its way back to my body, when my concentration lapsed. Why did my concentration lapse? I remembered I was already flying when my spark collapsed back into me. Did Eidolon push me out of the way? Was Behemoth here?

I realize that I've hit the ground and started rolling towards the fence. No pain. Why is there no pain? I see a few drops of blood flying in slow motion away from me as I tumble ever so slowly on the ground. My right arm swings past my vision and it's clearly broken unless I've grown another elbow. I don't remember getting extra elbows with my new power. Even while he is still sliding backwards in his bubble, Eidolon has yanked the rebar out of the ground and lifted the metal top off the bunker, and Panacea actually jumps into the air. No. Glory Girl is carrying her. Towards me. Must be because of the blood? I realize that my perception is warped, and my thinking isn't right, sort of like dream logic. This concerns me, but despite a brief effort to clarify my thoughts, things stay fragmented, time distorted, difficult to track.

Eidolon looks at Murphy, who is running towards me. And yells for him to stop. Murphy yells something back. Eidolon creates a bubble of force around me, Himself, Glory Girl, and Panacea. My burning clothes fly off in every direction. I want to laugh, but can't.

Defiant starts talking to Murphy, from several feet away, while Murphy is beating on Eidolon's shield. I hear fragments. Panacea and Eidolon are also talking. Can't really tell who is saying what "My fault" "Again" "bleeding first" "heart OK" "Friend" "He's alive" "brain injury" "will be fine" "Can see and hear"

Panacea is waving a finger in front of my eyes, while watching my face. Glory Girl is straightening my arm at Panacea's direction. Oh, I've never seen a compound fracture before.

"No pain. Lucky for him." "Is this straight enough?" "can't heal the brain." "keep him alive." "Regenerate his brain, but that power is weak." "Fix the rest." "Five minutes" "fix blood vessels in brain?" "No, can't touch that."

Are they arguing over who will heal me? I try to chuckle. "Seizure?" someone says. Panacea stares at me, touches my throat, shakes her head, and says "He's laughing, I think he's laughing at us based on where his eyes are tracking."

Glory Girl just stares at Panacea then at me, and mutters something about "damn near dead, and laughing". Still holding my arm steady. The bone's not sticking out any longer at least. Hope they cleaned it before putting it back in, that would be a heck of an infection I'm sure.

Someone's hands touch either side of my skull from above my head where I can't see them. I hear Eidolon's voice. "OK... brain damage... not terrible. Projectiles were tiny, sharp, and fast. Blast wave secondary damage stopped by legs and torso while tumbling. Lucky."

As he speaks, my hearing and thoughts become clearer. Panacea says "Six breaks in various leg bones, two compound fractures in one arm. five broken ribs. Lucky to live. Major external bleeding is stopped. Working on organ hydrostatic damage next, then nerves, and bones last. I'll want help with the bones if you can, Eidolon, bones take a lot of time for me - I'd like to have him able to move himself if need be. Glory Girl keep that arm immobile a while longer."

Eidolon agrees with a simple "Yes, I will help until he is healed fully."

"No spinal injury." "Turn him onto his back. Careful with the arm." "Raise his legs."

Defiant's voice. "Let Murphy in, he's calm now."

Eidolon drops the shield.

I see Murphy walk up, looking at me. Panacea looks at Murphy and says "He'll be fine."

The pain is coming back. So is my voice. I clear my throat. So weak. With my unbroken arm, I raise my hand, flip Murphy a bird, say "Just a flesh wound", and then chuckle. Murphy looks at my hand, then at my face and the painful grin I've plastered there, and shakes his head. Blackness.


	4. Chapter 4

All rights to the material contained within belong to the author of the original work, which can be found at www dot parahumans dot wordpress dot com (strange formatting had to be used to unbreak whatever the editor is doing to the link)

I am only having fun playing in Wildbow's Universe, I have no claim of ownership, past, present, or future on any character or literary element here, including characters or literary elements that I create myself.

*********Second Draft (I do welcome suggestions - it's been 25 years or so since I took English classes)*************

Light. How much time has passed? Can't hear anything. Ah, I'm in my spark, biological body is still being tended to.

I move the spark out of my body. Panacea and Eidolon both startle a bit. I see Eidolon nod in the direction of my spark and speak to Panacea. She relaxes. Interesting. In its low power state, I'm surprised that Panacea even saw it, nobody else but Eidolon appeared to notice. Maybe she just noticed something in my body change? That seems right. She never looked at me, but Eidolon is looking straight at me. His visual adjustment is apparently still active.

Murphy is standing exactly where he was when I went unconscious, wringing his hands, and watching Eidolon and Panacea tend me. Defiant is wandering around in the debris where Murphy was, examining items. Kid Win and Water Weird are walking towards headquarters. Glory Girl is standing about three feet behind Panacea.

Unless Defiant ran to the pile from where I saw him last speaking with Murphy, at least two or three minutes have passed.

I look at Eidolon, point to where my ears might be, and shrug. Eidolon speaks to Murphy, who nods and pulls a smartphone out of his pocket and starts working on it. Murphy looks up, looks around, and then looks back at the smartphone tapping his fingers with impatience on the frame of the phone. I move around to look at what Murphy is doing. Looks like he's downloading a speech recognition app. Smart. We should be able to talk soon, or at least I will be able to read what they say.

The app stops downloading, and Murphy starts the application and based on what is happening on the screen, he is speaking the alphabet, numbers, etc., as the machine asks him to, as part of its baseline speech recognition. Then he finishes setting up the application, and holds the phone flat in front of him like it was sitting on a table. I start to watch the screen as Murphy talks.

"Eidolon wants to speak to you about your body first."

Eidolon then begins speaking, but the phone is not configured for him, so it prints gibberish to the screen, mostly. Murphy holds up his hand. "I'll translate Eidolon, the phone isn't doing well with your voice since it is set up for me." Eidolon nods.

"Because you have brain injuries as well as bone injuries, Eidolon has placed your body into an induced coma while Panacea is controlling muscle groups to hold bones in place. Eidolon is using regeneration to heal both brain and bone damage, since Panacea can't work in your brain, and healing bones is very time consuming for her. They expect to be able to release your muscles and bring your body out of coma shortly. About two to three minutes."

Panacea speaks. Eidolon concentrates and nods. Then Eidolon speaks again for a bit and Murphy starts to translate.

"Expect there to be some 'blank spots.' You suffered brain trauma. The brain can be regenerated, but the data in the damaged parts is gone. Panacea has been seeing some very strange neural behavior though, she's never seen anything exactly like it. She can't work in the brain itself, but she can very clearly see chemical by products in the blood and neural activity along the spine. I advised her that it is probably your passenger controlling your spark, but she says no. She's seeing chemical and electrical activity that corresponds with learning, but different in a way she can't really understand. Please nod if I remember right. You said that you actually have two minds when the spark is separated from you, and have difficulty with keeping the thoughts in your spark and your biological body differentiated, correct?"

I turned from the screen and looked at Eidolon and nodded to him. He nodded back, then started speaking to Panacea and then to Murphy again.

Murphy translated it all. "Eidolon to Panacea: Looks like you might be right Panacea, Arc just nodded back to me. I'd bet that the learning indicators you are seeing traces of are Arc's spark writing lost information back into his biological brain." Then a pause. "Eidolon to you: I suspect that you will have little or no lost data, and a near perfect recovery, due to your spark writing data back into your biological brain. However you are going to be ravenous. Panacea says you have been regenerated recently, you are too healthy overall for your age. Is that correct?"

I nod to Eidolon.

Eidolon speaks again. Murphy speaks to the phone and I read some more. "OK, so you know to expect serious hunger pangs. We will be bringing your body out of coma shortly." Panacea released my hand and my body visibly relaxed. Eidolon concentrated a bit and consciousness returned. I allowed my spark to collapse back into my body.

My stomach growled. Loudly. However my concern was elsewhere. Two teenage girls, both quite good looking, and me lying flat on my back, and all of my clothes strewn all over the place, in little bitty burnt bits. My hands both immediately moved to cover myself.

Panacea laughed. Glory Girl smiled. Then Panacea spoke. "I heal a lot of men, Arc, a good number of them are missing clothes when the healing takes place in the field. Regeneration tends to, umm, stir things up a bit. Your reaction is quite healthy, and normal."

My face turned bright red. I know it did. "Well, young ladies, while I am glad to discover that my, umm, reaction to regeneration is normal, I would greatly appreciate you turning your backs for a moment. I believe there was some cloth in that pile of stuff near where Murphy was standing?"

Panacea and Glory Girl smirked, at the same time, with almost the same expression, but turned around. Eidolon stood up, looked over at the pile of stuff, and gestured, and a bunch of white cloth came over, which he cut down into a bed sheet sized piece of cloth. He then made another gesture and a few feet of rope came flying out of the pile. "Your toga, sir." Eidolon said with a smile. "You can certainly find something better soon, you are a normal sized person, and there are shops nearby, just let Dragon know what you take, so we can pay for it, if the owner can or will accept payment."

So I put on the Toga. My boots, fortunately, were only scorched, not destroyed. "You blew all my clothing off in an instant, but not my boots?" I said to Eidolon, a bit incredulous.

"I only tore off the burning clothing. Your boots weren't on fire."

"I see. OK, serious stuff now. What happened there? I'm back in one piece again, which I am very grateful for by the way, but I thought we had some idea about Murphy's power's reactions to attack?"

Defiant walked up. "We do. We just didn't explain it to you well enough." And he looked right at Eidolon when he said it. "I reviewed the recordings, etc., from my machines out here, and asked Dragon about what you had been told while in flight, and while it might make logical sense, you were never told clearly that Murphy's power will react with greater and more focused violence whenever he is trapped."

"Oh. I said." Then looked at Murphy, who went from looking happy to stricken in just a second's time as he saw me looking at him. "No Murphy. Don't even start. No need for an apology. You are forgiven, but ah, let's try to avoid that scenario again?" I reached out my hand and held it out until he also reached out and shook my hand.

Eidolon and Defiant were looking at each other and there was some heat there, on both sides. Eidolon looked away from Defiant, facing me, and said "Sorry. Unlike Murphy, I was responsible for telling you the dangers, since I was acting as the safety, but I failed to do so. I admit it was due to the novelty of your power, I got distracted, and missed telling you not to take any action that might make Murphy's power feel that it was both trapped and in direct danger."

"Also forgiven. Fixing my brain and bones after the accident is more than an acceptable apology for me, and I doubt you will forget again. Oh, while we are thanking people for healing me, thank you Panacea and Glory Girl."

Glory Girl looked confused, so I turned a bit to face her directly.

"I watched you put the bones back where they were supposed to go in my arm, then hold my arm while the bones started to heal. You didn't get blood on your gloves by standing behind Panacea, so thank you."

Glory Girl said "You're welcome, sir." And I laughed.

"Just call me Arc. You're supposed to call old people sir." She looked at me funny. I laughed. "OK, to you I'm old, but just call me Arc. Since I don't have an immediate family or a secret identity, I'll probably just do the name change thing anyway."

Then I turned to Panacea. "I owe you my life and I know it. I didn't see and hear everything, but I was conscious until Eidolon put me under, and I know it's very likely I would have bled out before Eidolon's regeneration could have healed me. I owe you a great debt. Since I'm a public hero, you can look me up any time. Feel free to do so if you ever need anything that I might possibly help with."

Panacea smiled. "It's what I do, Arc. I don't keep track of who I help and the favors they feel that they owe me, because I'm a healer, not a thinker. Just help other people when you can, and we'll call it even?"

"Agreed." I said.

I then kissed both their hands, one after the other, with a bit of foolish flourish. Glory Girl pulled her hand away at first, but I pointed out that it was my blood on her gloves, and I was kissing the back of her hand, where there was no blood.

Then I turned to Eidolon, Defiant, and Murphy as the girls walked towards a building with a big red X on a huge banner. "I got a bit distracted there Eidolon, sorry." I pushed my hand out firmly to him for a shake. "All's well, no grudges."

He took my hand with a firm shake. "Roger that. I'll nurse a bit of guilt over it but thank you for forgiving me. It nearly cost you your life. I have to go now. Ear bud communicator indicates Behemoth has surfaced and is moving more purposefully now. The thinkers are trying to figure out what he's doing, but he's definitely changing behavior back to something a lot more normal."

Murphy spoke up before Panacea got out of earshot, "Thank you again Panacea!" She turned and waved at him and he waved back. He rubbed his eyes as he turned away from her and us and lit a cigar. "Defiant, did you learn anything that can make this worthwhile to Arc?" His voice was a bit broken.

"Well, I definitely caught a few things of interest. First off is that the material your power generated to protect you from Arc's spark is both an excellent structural material, and a near perfect electrical conductor at room temperature. I have some samples, and I collected the devices which appeared to generate it, and will experiment with it more. We have stronger materials and better conductors, but this material is very good for both, at room temperature, which is uncommon. So if I can duplicate it in a lab, we will split the patent rights, as usual with Dragon moderating. If it's mass producible, the market for power generation and transmission equipment alone will make us both a great deal of money. Possibly enough for you to stop doing things like this." He waved his hand towards the center of the ball field.

"Ah, that's well and good for us, and I'll work with Dragon and Arc to arrange to get him a largish cut of the royalties if the material becomes mass producible. But what about insights into Arc's power?" Murphy said.

"I've got a question or two for Arc first, to make sure that I know what I think I know." Defiant replied, looking at me.

"Go ahead." I replied.

OK, first question. "You were getting ready to cut into the faraday cage that Murphy's power created, like an arc welder, with one hand as ground, and the other as the hot lead, right?"

"Yes."

"OK. And you don't provide power for your spark from yourself, it only comes from outside sources, correct?"

"Yes, again." I replied.

"OK. First off, I have reviewed the recording and calculated the power that your spark was going to have to use to even threaten to damage the material surrounding Murphy. Secondly, I checked the rating on the wiring you pulled power from. It doesn't add up. The power you are passing to your spark has to be at least four orders of magnitude higher than what you were processing through the wiring at the lights."

"Hrm. That sounds about right I think." I said.

Defiant cocked his head. "Have you considered the ramifications of this?"

"No. Yes. Wait. What?"

Defiant laughed. There was a little bit of condescension in the laugh, and I bristled a bit. Defiant made a patting motion palm down, with his right hand. "You've been working with non-cape physics all your life. Please accept my apologies if I just irked you a bit. Think about it. You absorb power into your spark by passing a current through your biological body. That power is increased exponentially when it is broadcast into your spark. Your spark has the ability to act as a ground from one hand and a hot lead on the other…" He looked at me expectantly.

It hit me. "Umm, I'm a perpetual motion machine now. Holy shit."

"Yup, better than that really. Several orders of magnitude better than that. Want to test it, carefully?"

"Yes. Got any wiring? I'd rather not try this with no buffer at first." I said.

"Sure. Over in the pile there's lots of wiring, we'll get some smaller stuff to start."

Murphy, red eyed, turned around, and tapped the ash off his cigar. "Sounds like your power just got a whole lot more versatile if Defiant is right, Arc. I'll hang back here a few yards away while you guys test."

Defiant and I walked over to the pile, and found a length of small diameter wire, about fourteen gauge stranded copper. We cut it in two and laid it out on the ground. Defiant said "Close your eyes before you start." Then he went back to where Murphy was.

I sent my spark out, and had it touch its end of both of the wires. Then I took the left wire in my left hand, and put my right hand near the right wire, said, loudly "Fire in the hole!", and closed my eyes, then touched the right wire.

Instantly my fingers were in pain. I couldn't hold the wires due to the heat, and had to drop them both, and instinctively licked both fingers and both thumbs to help cool them off where they were probably going to be developing nasty blisters. At the same time I was looking at the world from 15 feet in height from my spark's kneeling position, with its hands on the other ends of the wires.

Defiant was walking back over. "Like I thought. Based on the height of the spark, you fed it about as much power in a quarter of a second by looping it back on itself as you did in nearly 45 seconds pulling from an outside source. How are your fingers? Heat or electrical burn?"

"Heat." I said.

"OK, Arc, just to let you know, you have pretty much just become independently wealthy. With some careful experimentation and some working with utility companies, you should be able to rig up something that will allow you to generate power on an industrial scale. For a small percentage of your net, and occasional visits from you to my lab for power generation, I'd be glad to design and maintain the equipment."

"Right now, I'd be more interested in figuring out what sorts of limits I have."

"That, we can do. But I'll want to bring Red Cross in on this as well, to set up some sort of biometric monitors. We'll also have some room temperature superconductors, which, ah, I asked Dragon to bring a few minutes ago, so they should be arriving in about 30 minutes. But we can do another test real quick if you don't mind."

"Sure, what do you have in mind?" I said.

"I want your spark to touch the same wires you had it touch before, with the same hands, but I want you to swap hands. You left hand on the right wire, and vice-versa." Defiant said as he gestured by crossing his forearms. Then he continued. "Based on what I saw when your spark returned to your body after you were hit, I think that's a grounding mechanism of sorts"

So I positioned my spark and myself as directed and touched the wires. The same heat, just as fast, with the same fingers to mouth reaction and worse blisters, but my spark shrank just as fast, if not faster than it had grown.

"I probably need to just do this without wires. My natural conductivity is electrical not thermal. I don't mind a couple blisters, but they are annoying." I returned my spark to my body, and turned with Defiant and Murphy to walk towards the landing field to meet the transport with the wiring that Defiant was having brought to test with.

Defiant grunted. "You said you were an electrician, and I saw the work you did in that electrical box you first charged your spark in, while you were doing it in video, and after when I was testing that circuit, so I believe it. Why are you willing to take risks with electricity like that?"

"Is it a risk?" I said.

"Damn straight it's a risk, and you should know better..." Then he cocked his head slightly, obviously listening to someone.

"Ah, right" he said. "Yes, that makes sense, and I'll talk with him about it." He continued. "Dragon has just reminded me of something. Two things actually, which you need to be aware of."

"Does this relate to the chewing out you were getting ready to deliver a few seconds ago?" I asked.

"Yes. Dragon just made me realize a couple things, and she reviewed the recordings of mine and hers with you in it and nobody has mentioned it to you that we can tell."

"Ah, sounds interesting. Is this something along the lines of 'Don't trap Murphy'?"

Murphy snorted reflexively, then looked pained and looked at me. I gave him a quick grin back and he apparently understood I didn't take offense.

Defiant, however, did pause and give me a sharp look, obviously annoyed, but shook his head and continued. "No. Nothing that serious. But serious enough to not joke about. And incidentally, directly related to seriousness in general." He continued. "You have had two things happen to you recently that do not fit in your body's natural development cycles. Regeneration, and a trigger event. Both of these things have impacts on you that are not immediately obvious. Psychological and chemical balance effects."

"You have my attention. Please continue." I said.

"Basically, any time you are fully regenerated, all tissues, like I understand you were exposed to in the hospital after your trigger event, it doesn't just fix damage, it actually reverts body chemistry to a normal state for your sex at the peak of reproductive activity level. That means you now have the body chemistry of a young man around twenty years old. Including testosterone, adrenal, and various other chemicals and chemical receptor systems. Systems that naturally degrade slowly over time in most people. So you went from the body chemistry of a fifty year old man to that of a twenty year old man in the space of time that was required to regenerate you. Do you follow?"

I thought about it briefly, and mentally reviewed some of my earlier actions. "Ah, yes, that does make a lot of sense. I have been feeling a bit odd about some of my actions recently, but had simply written them off as life changes and stress relief mechanisms, but that's only one thing. Full body regeneration resets my body to college-age body chemistry. What about the trigger event?"

"The trigger event issue is murkier. The very nature of most trigger events can cause mental scarring. They nearly always occur at a time when there is a great deal of mental stress, for whatever reason. In cases like that where people survive, whether or not they trigger, there can be mental health issues. There seems to be a common trend in trigger events though. Post trauma aggressiveness. Even people who triggered in situations where psychologists would normally expect shyness and withdrawal as a high probability have a higher degree of aggressiveness and risk taking than one would normally expect in trauma survivors, even in cases where aggressiveness is expected, it's more pronounced. It's not a huge effect, but it's definitely enough to be noticeable in the large scale studies that have been performed on cape psychology."

"OK, so I am likely to be at least a bit more aggressive, and have the biochemistry of a twenty-year old." A lot of things are starting to make more sense now.

"As a middle aged man, biologically, you would normally be a bit more resistant to the trigger event aggressiveness because you are typically more mature, with anger and aggressiveness coping mechanisms. Your biochemistry at middle age is also a lot less volatile. But you no longer have that middle aged biochemistry, so you are resisting the trigger event effects with only your natural social coping mechanisms."

I thought about it a bit more. "I see. Seems like I'm going to have to double-think a lot from now on."

"Not so much as you might think. Capes who trigger in early middle age or later rarely have control issues after a short while, it's the teens and preteens that have the worst problems. They haven't fully learned how to fit in socially before they are impacted."

"Does this affect all cape types? From what little I know about thinkers, they don't seem to be aggressive, typically." I asked.

Murphy belly laughed and Defiant chuckled. They looked at each other and Defiant nodded to Murphy and said. "Go ahead and explain."

Murphy nodded in agreement, chuckled a couple times and rubbed his chin before speaking. "Thinkers are actually some of the most aggressive of all capes. They are hugely competitive. They just don't knock over buildings and crush cars when they engage in their conflicts. Cloak and dagger, or psychological warfare is the name of the game for them, typically, though if they are forced into it, some thinkers can be pretty damn impressive in straight up combat. When two thinkers walk into the same room, you probably will notice at least a minor shift in both of their behaviors. You have to remember that for most thinkers, if you notice a minor shift in their behavior, it means they just went to full alert general quarters, and they will stay there for as long as another thinker is present." He paused and gathered his thoughts a bit.

"You met a thinker today, actually, and she gave a very good simple example of their ability. Tattletale overheard two sentences, saw some of your body language, and was able to figure out that the only cape whose costume you would recognize is Slinki. Thinkers are generally pretty damn amazing when they are acting within the bounds of their powers, and most of the rest of us see very little of the byplay between them. That byplay is definitely there if you watch closely enough, and if you work with more than one thinker regularly, it's practically guaranteed that one of them will eventually use you as a way to get to the other. You will probably never even know it happened unless one of them likes you a lot and explains it for some reason."

"I see." I said, then continued "So when dealing with multiple thinkers, I should treat them like I would treat a divorced couple. Except more carefully."

Murphy thought for a second and then agreed. "Yes, that's a reasonable comparison, but the dislike will probably be more significant, and your ability to detect it will be almost nonexistent as a non-thinker."

"Fair enough. Thank both of you for the warnings and the explanations. Every little bit helps. The cape community is a lot more complex than I imagined."

"No problem." Said Defiant with a small nod of his head at the same time that Murphy waved dismissively and said the same.

We were almost to the landing field at this point and Defiant pointed to an incoming shuttle. "That's our cargo. Dragon also found a clothing shop nearby that sells casual clothing, if you want to go get into something a bit more modern than a toga." He grinned.

Murphy turned to me and said "I'll be leaving on the same shuttle that brought Defiant's cargo shortly. With Behemoth around and acting normally, it's really not safe for everyone else if I stay. I'm really sorry about earlier. Today has not been a good day. I'm just glad that your injuries were fully treatable, I was scared shitless that I might have gotten you killed."

"Murphy, I've known you for less than a day, and I like you. You have a crazy power that nearly killed me, but you don't have direct control over it. I'll tell you straight up that your power scares the crap out of me, but I enjoy your company and think I have a handle on how to keep you power from seeing me as a threat. Add my number to your phone please. My phone was damaged when Eidolon shredded my clothes to keep me from burning. I'll get a new phone when I get home again, and expect to get a call from you. Maybe we can do some fishing or something."

Murphy grinned. "I'd like that. Maybe some online gaming as well if you're into that sort of thing."

"Fiddled around with that from time to time too, can be fun. More fun with friends."

We shook hands and waved as we both turned. I to go get clothing, Murphy to get into the shuttle that Defiant had just finished pulling a crate and spool of wire out of.

I picked out a long sleeve black turtleneck and a pair of blue jeans and a leather belt, replaced socks and underwear, etc., and as I walked past one of the shuttles on the way back to where Defiant was, I stuck my head in a shuttle. "Dragon. You listening here?"

"Sure Arc, how can I help?"

"Just picked up a pair of jeans, shirt, underwear, socks and belt from the little clothing shop over there. Can you send me an email and remind me to arrange to send them $100 for the items I got?"

"Nope. Paid for. The PRT has a petty cash fund. This qualifies as a valid use of it. Don't worry about it."

I thought about it for a second, it made sense I suppose, then said. "OK, send me an email reminding me to donate to the PRT discretionary fund then."

"Ah, sure. I can do that. You really don't need to donate you know." Dragon said.

"Dragon I'll take help when I need it, and when someone helps me, I try to help back when I can. I've just been shown that money's not going to be a problem for me again, even without a secret identity."

Dragon was silent for a second. "Fair enough, Arc, thank you."

I then realized that I had brought changes of underwear and socks, and they were probably still under my seat in the shuttle. Ah well. Not a real concern at this point.

My stomach snarled as I walked away. I had been ignoring the rumblings of my stomach for a while, but this time it was actually very uncomfortable and very loud. I looked around for a deli or some sort of food shop that might carry portable food. I saw a little deli right there, grabbed a business card with the Deli's name off the countertop and looked around. Apparently I wasn't the first to have this idea. All that was left in the open was a couple small fruitcakes. When I saw them, my stomach snarled at me again. So I picked up two of the fruitcakes, and two water bottles, and wrote the price on the business card, with a pen from the counter, and folded the card into my pocket. I opened the first fruitcake right there in the shop before I even got to the door, and took a large bite, expecting to have to choke down the stuff. I have never liked fruitcake. It was wonderful. Regeneration apparently not only makes you ravenous, it makes everything taste good too.

A couple minutes later I walked over to where Defiant was talking with Red Cross over a small generator, next to a chair and a table with a bunch of equipment laying on it. There were two strands of wire laid out on the ground that stretched at least 100 feet across the grassy field. Several of Dragon's shuttles were moving around, getting farther from where I suspected that Defiant would want my spark to be standing while we tested the extent of my abilities.

As I approached, Red Cross and Defiant were arguing and I overheard some of it. Red Cross said "…pushing him too hard. Seven days, two near-death experiences… Irresponsible." Defiant said "He might be able to actually go into melee with Endbringers, like Siberian can, with his spark… absurd potential… too powerful to coddle…"

I announced myself with a cough. "Red. I appreciate your concern, but I think Defiant has the right of it. I need to know my limits, and if my limits are high enough, I might be a lot of help against Behemoth. At the very least I should get charged up and start acting as a scout. I do have a question though, Defiant, do you have any way to tell if any of Behemoth's attacks can hurt my spark?"

Red Cross broke in, with concern in his voice. "Give me a few minutes to rig up some more testing equipment before you test any sort of damage dealing against his spark, Defiant. All I'm set up for now is measuring stresses related to how his body processes electrical power, not how it responds to stimuli from his spark."

Defiant nodded. "We'll wait for that then, until you are ready, Red Cross." Then he continued. "From what I've seen and the readings I've taken of the way your spark interacts with the world, I do not think you need to worry about anything hurting your spark. Do you ever feel pain from it?" asked Defiant.

"No, I barely feel anything from it other than a very crude tactile sense. Just enough to let me walk and interact with its surroundings." I replied.

"We can test with some weapons on the spark, at the tips of its hands and go to more aggressive testing afterwards, when we get it grown. After Red Cross has prepared more sensors to be sure we don't cause damage that's not immediately apparent. Some capes have really strange ways that they can be injured. Red Cross is right to be a bit worried." A brief pause, then he continued. "This time around though, can you try to keep it from growing too much? The file we have on you indicates you can change its size, and it would probably be a good idea to keep it from growing to Godzilla size, or larger. We really don't know how fast it will grow with a superconductor lead."

"Sure, I can do that, but the denser it is, the harder it is to control." I said.

Defiant grunted. "OK, that's a fairly important limitation we'll need to remember. As for the safety stuff this time around, Dragon has designed a simple monitor bot to break the connection between you and the spark if your spark grows too large too fast and endangers any people or structures nearby. It's also tied into Red Cross's equipment as well. If your body begins to stress heavily, the arc will be disconnected from you. That will happen here." He pointed his finger at a box that several wires ran to, including both superconducting wires, a few feet from me.

"Sounds good. Red, are the monitors for the test of my feeding the spark ready?" I asked.

Red Cross nodded. "Ready and waiting for the test. Just put on the cap and belt with the leads on them, sitting on the chair there. Hair and clothing are not a problem, nor is position as long as the belt is fully encircling your waist and the hat is seated on your head fully, so the edges touch your ears.

I put on the hat and belt as I had been told. Defiant checked a few things and gave a thumbs up.

"Here goes then." I released my spark, and had it trace the electrical lines out to their end and look around. Expanding the spark to keep it roughly human size as it got farther away from me. Nothing above me and clear space 100 feet in each direction. The wires were about six feet apart, so I expanded the spark a little bit had it kneel down, and put its hands on the ends of the wire.

"Spark is ready." I said. "There will be grass fires, do we have anyone standing by to put them out?"

Dragon replied "Yes, look to your right, Arc." So I looked right and saw two robots or very heavily armored people each with a fire hose at the ready.

"Roger that then, starting the test." And I grabbed one line then the other, carefully, and touched my skin to the conductors.

What a rush! I can actually feel the power cascading through me. No pain or burning sensations. I then notice that I am looking over the top of nearby buildings from the point of view of my spark, while it's kneeling.

"Whoops. One second." I drop one wire, and concentrate on reducing the spark to human size again. Then pick up the wire I had dropped, trying to concentrate on keeping the spark small while I feed it more power. It is somewhat difficult to manage this. As time passes, the sensation of power is more and more distracting. Still, there is no pain. The pleasure is building through, in some ways a lot like pleasure from sex builds. This realization makes me pause and drop the wire again. I'm not exactly sure what would happen if the sex parallel is more than just a metaphor. I am aroused sexually. My spark doesn't have sex organs, but I'm not sure I want to see what would happen if I were to orgasm while the spark contains that much power. Visions of Anime city destroying explosions give me pause.

"Need to take a breath or two before I continue. Difficult to stay clear headed."

Defiant asks "Are you in pain?"

I see Red Cross shake his head slightly with a grin where he's monitoring some sensors, not answering Defiant, just responding to the question unconsciously.

"No pain. More like pleasure. And a bit disturbing. There might be potential for addiction here if I'm not careful" I explain, somewhat haltingly, to Defiant.

"That is a problem some capes experience, Arc, when using their powers. You won't be alone in having to deal with controlling an addiction to power use if it comes to that. As I mentioned before though, your ability to magnify power like this is going to open a lot of doors for you, and if it's something that you get enjoyment from doing, well, so much the better."

"The problem here is that I'm getting enough enjoyment from it that it is distracting. Like sex. A lot like sex, really. I'm concerned about my ability to control the process through the sensations."

Defiant looks over to Red Cross. "Are you seeing biometrics to match what he's reporting, and, Dragon, is the bot prepared to shut off the connection if it looks like he's losing control?"

Red Cross nods, and Dragon chimes in with a "Yes".

From my spark's point of view, I notice that the guys with armor and fire hoses are dousing the grass fires that are forming around my spark with a light spray. My arc is a bit bigger than human size, and sluggish to respond to commands. It's easily carrying power more densely than I've ever managed before, even though it's not particularly small. I concentrate to shrink the spark. To see if there is a limit to the density of power yet. It shrinks down to a few inches in height with no difficulty, but controlling it at that size feels like I'm trying to swim through concrete. There's definitely going to be a power density control issue for the human sized spark soon.

I've calmed down a bit. I regrow the spark to human size, and position it at the wires again. "Ready to go again." Red Cross nods, and offers a thumbs up. I then ask Dragon. "Are there humans in those suits, Dragon, or are they bots?"

"They are bots." She replied.

"OK, I'm a bit concerned about the whole puddle of water on the ground and the amount of power that the spark contains right now. Just wanted to be sure there weren't people in there."

"It's all good Arc, worst case scenario, we can lose them with no harm done. They are attempting to use the least water possible to control the flames though, to prevent the puddle scenario you are worried about."

"So you are way ahead of me, it seems. Again." I say with a chuckle. "Something tells me that if we continue to work together you're probably always going to be a step or three ahead of me, Dragon."

Red Cross and Defiant both smile at that, and simultaneously say "Yes."

Dragon doesn't say anything for a second, then replies "Now you're trying to make me blush, Arc. Enough of that for now."

"Roger that, resuming test.", and I pick up the wires again. The conversation had taken my mind off things long enough that there wasn't an immediate worry about losing control again. But wow, did it feel good. I had to very carefully monitor the size of the spark at this point. Switching my attention between my real body and the spark. It was growing very rapidly, several meters per second, and I had to constantly shrink it. I was reaching some sort of density limit though, it was actually becoming difficult to shrink the spark.

"Becoming difficult to keep the spark at human size. Getting harder to shrink it. Very hard to control its movements at this size. Continue the test and let the spark grow, or stop?" I ask.

Defiant was looking at my spark and thinking. "Stop feeding the spark, I think. We don't need to know the full limits of your power today. What you have here is more than sufficient to be useful in the field. Based on readings from the sensors in that box, the power contained inside your spark right now is roughly equivalent to world aggregate power generation for an hour or so."

I released my hold on the wire and took a step back. I was sweating at my brow, and I'll be damned if I didn't have a case of blueballs. Twenty year old biology has its drawbacks. I decided right there that I'm probably going to have to look around for some companionship if I start powering the spark up to this level on anything like a regular basis.

Red Cross looked at me with a knowing grin. "Well, with the exception of some issues that a bit of friendly company would resolve for him, there's been no problem for Arc during this test."

Defiant was paging through the data. "Control issues aside, I agree. No potential health issues or control loss issues, provided that he keeps mental focus." That's the good side. "However there is a bit of a bad side to this. With the spark."

"Huh" I said, cleverly, and switched my attention into the body of the spark, slowly, slowly, standing up. "Yes, it's very hard to move it, it is very sluggish."

"That's part of it, but look at the ground around it."

So I looked with my biological eyes and saw the spark standing there with heat waves and waves of steam surrounding it like some sort of Hollywood special effects. I switched attention into the spark and slowly inclined my head down and looked at the ground. "Oh. I see."

My spark's feed were ankle deep in molten material, and it looked like the molten state was slowly extending. The ground for several feet around was cracked and barren, like some fictional wasteland. For several feet around that the grass was carbonized, and in a ring several feet around that, the grass was burning. Every few seconds a brief sheet of water would put out flames, there would be a billow of steam, and flames would start again.

"Not exactly team friendly, it seems."

"There are capes that could work beside you just fine, but your potential for collateral damage in the field is pretty extreme, because this appears to be involuntary. You can't tighten up your control and keep from leaking power?" Defiant asked.

"Never been able to figure out a way to do that."

Defiant grunted. Then yanked on the two wires leading to the spark as the box they were attached to started blinking a red light and emitting a warbling alarm tone. "Coolant failure in the wires in fifteen seconds if we don't get them away from your spark, then no more superconductive wires." He commented. "In a few minutes the cooling system will be able to handle depowering your spark, but we need to do some testing first anyway."

Red Cross stood up and walked towards me with a few things in his hands. "There are for testing the spark, and watching for harmful stimulus coming from your spark in response to attacks on it." He attached the gizmos to my belt and hat, and added their connections to the wiring harness.

"I'm starting to feel like a Cyborg, Red."

"Not based on those readings I saw a few minutes ago, you aren't." Red Cross punched me in the shoulder. "You're going to need help with that, if you start doing this on a regular basis. Doctor's Orders."

"No secret identity sort of makes that a difficult thing to manage, Red, I'd think." I replied with a smile and a shake of my head.

"Actually, not so much as you would think. You are a handsome man, a cape with a highly visible power, and there are plenty of women out there, or men if you lean that way, who would be more than willing to spend a few minutes with you. Capes are today's rock stars. You won't have a problem finding companionship for physical relief." Red Cross said, as he finished connecting wires and was looking at a small monitor on a hand held device. "OK, everything passes tests."

"Definitely women. Men don't hold any interest in that way for me. But the risk and danger to them? How can I justify that, just to help me deal with the side effects of using my power, Red?"

Red frowned. "Good to hear you saying that, but you have to realize that there are a lot of people in this world who are attracted to danger. Provided that you do your best to actually keep them out of harm's way, and keep them at a distance emotionally to prevent your potential future enemies from trying to use them against you, you should be fine. If you do build an emotional connection to someone, then it gets complex, but not impossible." He paused. "There are lots of people better suited to talk to you about such things than me though. I'm just letting you know it's possible. Dragon can direct you to people with actual experience with such things, who have helped other capes deal with issues like this. You are not the only one."

Defiant unfolded his arms while Red Cross walked back to his chair and monitors. "Dragon, can we use one of your remotes for testing? Arc's spark has the potential to do some serious damage to my gear as this point, perhaps even to me, and I'd rather avoid that if possible."

"Hrm, yes, I'll bring one of my older models over. I was planning on using it as Behemoth fodder anyway, at need. It's starting to require too much maintenance." I heard hydraulics nearby and then some heavy footsteps, and another Dragon remote a lot like the two doing fireman duty arrived. The unit had obviously seen better times. It was in good repair, but clearly had been on the bench a few times, different parts with different levels of wear and tear visible. It still moved smoothly though.

"Your remotes are pretty amazing Dragon." I said, watching it move.

"Thank you Arc, I'm constantly improving them, but there's always a better way to do things, it seems. This unit has been doing a lot of hard work and has required a lot of repairs for the last couple years and is going to be recycled soon anyway, so if you do damage it, please do not be concerned."

"OK, but I don't think I'm going to be attacking here, just defending, correct?"

Dragon started speaking from the remote itself, rather than from the device on the table next to Red Cross. "That's right. But when we're dealing with power at the level that your spark now contains, even defending can cause a lot of damage."

The remote turned to Defiant, reached into a compartment on its leg, and handed a small device to him. "Power core shutdown, if needed." Defiant nodded. Then the remote walked over to another nearby shuttle and pulled out a few devices, some of them obviously weapons and stacked them near where Red Cross's equipment was located. It pulled what appeared to be a simple metal staff from the pile first and walked over towards my spark, spinning the staff like a quarterstaff.

"One second, Dragon, I need to put on a blindfold for this I think. I'm starting to get a headache and I'd rather be able to concentrate my sight on you for this test." I pulled a strip of cloth out of my pocket that I had torn off the makeshift toga I had been wearing a while back, folded it a couple times, and tied it in place. "Ready!"

As soon as I said 'Ready', Dragon leaped at me with staff extended from twenty feet away, with amazing acceleration. The staff end stopped about a quarter inch from where my eyes would have been if the spark had eyes. "Wow, I said. And this one is an older unit?" I could see the foot-deep divot in the ground where the remote had leapt, and there was another equally large divot where it had stopped right in front of me, barely at the edge of the molten ground which was still slowly spreading.

"Were you able to tell I wasn't going to hit you, or were you not able to react?" Dragon asked.

"No ability to react that fast, Dragon, not at this power density. The more power I have in a smaller volume, the harder it is so make it move. As dense as this is now, I can barely move it at all, never mind actually dodge things."

"OK, I'll start tapping you progressively harder around your peripherals. Please TRY to defend yourself. You might discover that you have some sort of innate ability to defend that you don't have in your human body. If I hurt you, say something." She said.

And then things got really impressive. Dragon's remote started circling me like I was standing still, which, admittedly, I nearly was, but its dexterity and speed were amazing. It was like watching a martial arts movie. Every motion was smooth as silk. Every lunge and swipe hit me lightly to start with, then harder and harder. It was hard at first to even tell that she was hitting me, with the sensory input from the spark being so muted, but after a few seconds, I was able to start detecting the hits. After a few more seconds, the hits were very obvious, but still not painful.

Then all of a sudden the amazing dexterity turned into hilarity. While moving around me, all of a sudden one of the remote's legs locked up and the remote face-planted, literally trenching the ground for several feet with the head of the drone. I winced "You OK there Dragon?" I said.

"Only my pride is hurt." She replied. Two seconds while I bypass a failed actuator system. "OK, done." The drone slowly stood, moving with a pronounced limp.

"Have I caused you any injury yet, any pain?"

"Nothing yet, Dragon. I'm surprised that your staff isn't passing right through me though."

"Oh, that's the field density, probably. When you are low power, you can just pass through or around things. At high power, not so much. Like water. At very low densities, say water suspended in atmosphere, it is not an impediment that we can detect easily. But a wall of frozen water is a different story entirely. In your current state, you are more like a wall of frozen water. I was hitting you pretty hard too." She held up the staff which was bent and distorted and partially melted in a few spots. "Either you don't have any involuntary defenses, or I couldn't trigger them because I wasn't hurting you. We'll move on to other types of attacks and weapons."

This went on with Dragon for about 15 minutes, with energy and physical melee, energy and physical ranged attacks, etc. We tried it with me at human sized, at twice human sized, and at thirty feet tall. I could detect all of it, but none of it caused any pain, just a bit of pins and needles where the impacts were. The harder hits did actually move me a bit though. Pretty much everything that touched me started to melt on contact. We tried ice and water projectiles, and other than some pretty impressive steam effects, there was no debility. Defiant even tried exposing me to some very weak radioactive isotopes, to see if there was any detectable effect on my actual body, or any residual effect on my spark. Neither was the case.

"As far as I can tell, Arc, your spark is about as immune to physical or energy damage as Siberian, which is pretty damn amazing, to be honest." Dragon summarized. "Esoteric damage types might hurt you though, like gravity. Don't get too overconfident. However, I am pretty certain that you could take a few hits from Behemoth if you want to try. Most capes can't get close to him in melee because he will burn them from the inside out, but your spark is already hotter on the inside than he's able to generate. The problem is that Behemoth is very fast in melee, you are not. Even at your best speed you showed me, I do not believe that you will be able to engage him OR escape him. You will certainly get his attention, and he will certainly attack you for a time. He will be able to disengage at will though. You would be a distraction at best. Even if you can actually hurt him, he will be able to avoid you."

I thought about it. "I can probably keep up with him if I allow the spark to get a lot larger, but I would cause absurd amounts of collateral damage to buildings and whatnot. Gas stations and gas mains would be somewhat of a problem too, regardless of what size I am, when I'm carrying this much power."

Defiant and Dragon in her remote looked at one another. "You haven't seen what Behemoth leaves behind?" Defiant said, incredulously.

"I have worked restoring power in areas where he attacked, a couple times, but never seen the worst of the damage, no. It was one of those things which I chose not to look at, because from what I heard, it was terrible, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it."

"I can see that for the person that you used to be, Arc, but you need to see this now, I think. Dragon can you let us into one of the shuttles and put up some live feed from wherever Behemoth is now?" Defiant asked with a grim demeanor.

"Yes. The closest shuttle to you now. I'm opening the back hatch and booting the monitor system now." The hatch of the nearest shuttle opened and Defiant and I walked over to it. Red Cross was packing up his equipment and sent a worried look my way, which I don't think he meant for me to see.

When we entered the shuttle the monitors were showing various scenes, most with Behemoth at the center of them causing mayhem, some which were just still scenes of utter destruction.

"Holy shit. He's like a hurricane." I muttered.

"Worse. He's like a radioactive hurricane and fuel-air bomb all rolled into one. Anything that can burn that gets near him will burn, and he's far more damaging to the area around him than your spark is likely to be, even if your spark is Godzilla sized" Maybe one in ten capes can take even a glancing hit from him and remain able to fight. Maybe one in 100 can actually get close enough to engage him in melee. About one in 1000 capes can actually do both, and most of them can't fight him that way for more than a few seconds. Siberian and Lung are the only capes we know of who can engage Behemoth for more than a minute in melee, and neither of them will." Defiant said.

"I see." You believe that I can engage him in Melee then?

"Yes, but you can't hold him in melee range yourself. You're too slow, and you don't have thumbs to grab him. But you don't have to do it alone. We have plenty of capes with ranged powers that can help try to keep Behemoth near you, by knocking him back, or grabbing him with telekinesis, or whatever."

"And given enough opportunities, I might be able to get Behemoth into some sort of submission hold or a bear hug?"

"Exactly. Your spark's variable size allows your spark to be of an appropriate size to actually hold him in place if it is strong enough."

"So what you want me to try to do then, is work with flying capes and ranged capes to capture Behemoth?"

"Yes." He said, looking at me straight in the eyes.

I thought about it for a minute. It wouldn't be my body at risk here, and my spark did seem pretty invulnerable when pumped with this much power.

"What power levels does Behemoth have compared to what you measured in my spark?" I asked.

"We've never seen an upper limit to Behemoth's power."

"You aren't making this any easier, but I'll do it. A few things though. Firstly I'll need access to a LOT of power to feed to my spark if needed, and secondly I'll want people to be kept out of a direct line between myself and my spark. You saw what happened earlier when my spark was low powered and I lost control of it. I do not even want to think about what it might do to someone between it and myself if the spark returns to me uncontrolled for some reason. Lastly I'll need someone to be in live communication with me at my biological body to allow me to communicate with the flying capes and to warn me about things happening around my spark that I might not notice, since it can't hear."

Defiant handed me a heavy bracer with communication gear in it.

"Done, done, and done." Dragon said, then she continued. "There's a power plant nearby that is undamaged and I already have remotes there working to set up a command post and power supply for you. I have spoken with Tattletale and she's willing to assist with monitoring. She and I will be working together on this, to keep you in touch with the field, and to keep people out of a direct path between you and your spark. She has requested that the rest of the Undersiders join us there, and I have agreed. None of them are well suited for fighting Behemoth directly in an effort to control or contain him in any case, but they are very well suited for dealing with just about anything else that might pop up. I've spoken with Red Cross and the area is clear for us to take off. Moving us now to the power plant. My remotes will keep the area around your spark from burning. Just leave it there for now, OK?"

"Sure thing." I said. "Dragon, are you configuring the power system so I feed it through my body, or by near-skin contact?"

"Both. It will be your choice which to use. We're using the superconductive wire again, and the safety cutoffs are implemented again as well."

"Understood. Now tell me about the Undersiders. Any of them I need to worry about? The name seems familiar."

"They are villain capes," Dragon stated flatly, "but to be clear they have never once broken the truce at an Endbringer event. They can be trusted for as long as Behemoth is active. Treat them with respect and they will also treat you with respect. Mostly. Expect sarcasm. Tattletale is a thinker with a very potent analysis skill, and potentially a mind reader. She's never proven it clinically, but some of the things she's been documented as doing to gain information is just short of magic. Grue is calm, somewhat withdrawn, with darkness field powers and he experienced a second trigger event which allows him to duplicate some other powers as well. Imp lives up to her name, a practical joker, dark humor, and is a stranger who is invisible to almost anyone unless she chooses to be visible. I can see her with my remotes and cameras. Parian and Foil are a couple, Parian is calm, level headed, and can control and animate cloth, from simple threads to giant cloth animal constructs which are much tougher than they appear. Foil used to be a hero. Calm, level headed normally, but excitable from time to time. She can energize weapons so that they can pierce anything, including Endbringers. Parian and Foil typically work as a pair, with Parian providing mobility with giant stuffed animal mounts, and Foil shoots things with a crossbow loaded with energized ammo. Normally we would want them helping us in a Behemoth fight, but Foil's weapons might actually be capable of hurting your spark, and the effect they have doesn't really do much to contain or control motion, so we can spare her from this fight."

"They don't sound like villains to me on the surface." I said.

Defiant's head snapped around to me. "They are. Not all villains are the Slaughterhouse 9. The Undersiders hold power over Brockton Bay. They pretty much control the whole city. They enforce their rule by force, threat, or at best by frontier justice, not by law. As villains go, they aren't anywhere near the worst out there. They are pretty careful not to engage in any gratuitous violence. Basically imagine the "ideal" Mafia family scenario. That's how they run things."

"Ah I see. So Brockton Bay residents have all the benefits of civilization, except the ability to actually have a say in things?" I asked.

"That's about right." Dragon said. "To be perfectly honest, they do a better job governing than a lot of places, even in the civilized world, but it's based on the personal power of a handful of people, not the rule of law. Brockton Bay will dissolve into chaos if they are taken out of power, even if they are taken out of power by a legitimate government. Their support amongst the population runs deep, because the citizens actually appreciate them for now. They played a minor part in defeating Leviathan, a very significant part in post Leviathan recovery of the city, the Slaughterhouse 9, and Echidnae. Their ex-leader Weaver defeated Alexandria and exposed corruption at the highest levels of the PRT, and then quit the Undersiders and became a ward of the PRT. Which is still something of a problem."

Defiant looked very uncomfortable while Dragon was discussing these things, but I wasn't going to press him. "All well and good. Seems like they are "honorable" villains then. Frontier justice, but not psychopaths. Direct rule, cult of personality sort of stuff, without any real desire to either maintain or establish a representative government. Very Italian Mafia. Thank you for explaining that. It might keep me from putting my foot in my mouth."

"With the others, yes, with Tattletale, no. She's a thinker, and a potent one. If you don't like her or think badly about them, she will know it. If you consider acting against them in any way, she will know it. She doesn't ever jump the gun on people though, so if you have a moment of anger and want to swipe at one of them, but control it before you actually do, that's fine, don't panic, especially if Imp tries to get to you and you want to swat her. Just don't do it. If anything at all begins to escalate beyond banter or a little name calling, you are NOT to engage them or escalate in turn, let me handle it." Dragon said, then she continued, "Oh, and they are all in their teens to very early twenties, just to make things more interesting."

"Understood. Adding lack of impulse control and immaturity to the list of things to expect." I replied, making mental notes.

"Add it twice for Imp." Defiant growled.

"And we're here. Get ready for landing." And Dragon then started bringing the shuttle down.

"Another perfect landing Dragon. I continue to be impressed."

"Thanks. But we need to move. Behemoth just killed two more and wounded eight."

The door of the shuttle opened. We were in a large parking lot. The unmistakable presence of four nuclear plant containment facilities rose in the near distance. "Understood. Where are we set up?"

"Plant security has sent a shuttle to pick us up, we're going to be taken to a blockhouse maintenance facility next to the main transformers that feed the grid. My remotes are finishing up the installation of equipment now, and the Undersiders are already there making sure to keep people out of the way. Tattletale and Imp will be the only ones in the building with us, the others will work with me to keep people out of the direct path between you and your spark, as you requested.

We took the shuttle to the blockhouse, and after some brief introductions outside to the Undersiders that would stay outside, we entered the blockhouse. I walked into the facility, Defiant pointed to a door, and I passed through. I said hello to Tattletale and sat down in the chair that had been prepared for me with power cables running along the back and arms of the chair, allowing me to passively absorb power from the wiring running along my arms and back, or if I wanted to I could flip a switch and take hold of the wires directly.

Tattletale was standing in front of about thirty computer monitors, mounted on some sort of prefab monitor rack, watching them all, including one where my spark was center screen. Most of the monitors were displaying slowly changing points of view, so they were probably flying remotes. Since I had travelled about ten miles away, my spark was small enough that it was visible only as a speck, a point of light. I put on my blindfold, and I heard Tattletale mutter to herself. "Hrm, visual deprivation to prevent sensory overload."

Then I heard another female voice say "Hey Tattletale, you might try that for sex sometime. Maybe if you let your partner blindfold you it wouldn't be so squick?"

"Bondage as a partial solution to thinker mental hyperactivity during sex. Might actually be worth a try."

"Tattletale doesn't learn very much from us normal folks Arc, that's one to put in your cap - but I helped." Again that second female voice. Must be Imp.

I laughed. "Dragon are we a go?" Is the facility ready to supply power? Are the safeties in place?

"Yes, yes, and yes." Dragon said.

I started pulling power from the chair and feeding it to the spark. It was nearly impossible to feed it more.

"How big can I allow the spark to get, Dragon?" I asked.

"Tattletale will help you with direct analysis. I'm trying to organize for your arrival at Behemoth's location as well as keep people out of the path between you and the spark." Dragon said.

Tattletale looked out a window, then looked at a monitor, then took three steps to her right. Then pointed to the floor next to her and said "Imp. Stay within five feet of me at all times. Dragon's briefing indicates that at its current power level, Arc's spark will come back at him like a comet if he loses control of it. Defiant, do you have an alarm set to let us know if Arc loses control of his spark? A 100 foot comet incoming is something I want as much warning about as possible."

"Yes." Defiant said. "Two short, one long for that scenario."

Then Tattletale turned to me. "OK. Your spark gets easier to control as it gets larger, right?" She turned to the monitor bank. "Try 100 feet tall."

I grew the spark until I was looking from its eyes at the tenth story window of an office building nearby. My spark was still a bit stiff, but moved much more easily and quickly.

"That's 95 feet, but good enough." Tattletale continued. "Turn about forty-five degrees right and follow the four-lane road for five miles. That will put you near Behemoth."

"Roger that, moving." I said.

As I walked, I watched the cars I was stepping around take damage just from being near my feet, the tires exploding and burning, the glass melting, the paint catching on fire. The pavement I was walking on started to burn. The buildings that my shoulders passed near were suffering the same fate.

Time to wrestle an Endbringer.


	5. Chapter 5

All rights to the material contained within belong to the author of the original work, which can be found at www dot parahumans dot wordpress dot com (strange formatting had to be used to unbreak whatever the editor is doing to the link)

I am only having fun playing in Wildbow's Universe, I have no claim of ownership, past, present, or future on any character or literary element here, including characters or literary elements that I create myself.

*********Second Draft (I do welcome suggestions - it's been 25 years or so since I took English classes)*************

As I was moving the spark down the road, curiosity got the best of me. and I asked Tattletale. "How do you do what you do?"

After a few seconds, a reply, "How do you make a 100 foot tall electric Gummy Bear?"

"Oh, good point. I suppose I'm a bit overwhelmed by this whole cape thing, just making conversation."

"We all are, at first. It becomes a lot more normal feeling if you survive the first couple months after you start using your powers. Normally. Making conversation is fine though, helps relieve stress. Turn right here, there are walking wounded coming up the road in front of you, and we don't want you to get too close to them."

I turned right. It's a two lane road. My shoulders are literally scraping the sides of the buildings to either side, which are simply melting away from me. I turn my torso a bit while continuing to walk forward, to reduce the damage I'm doing to the buildings without slowing down. "It already seems a lot more normal to me, I guess, just a matter of acclimating to change, it's still a bit bewildering though."

"Listen to me here, Arc, ignore the buildings. We've got all sorts of capes and remotes scouring the area for people and getting them away. In a Behemoth fight we have many capes that really can't do much other than be the best support that we can be for the ones that actually can fight him. Every building in this city will be radioactive rubble and slag if we don't stop him, so you bashing up a few buildings is not going to be a problem." Tattletale stated, flatly.

Easy for her to say, I think to myself, I've been fixing power infrastructure that drives civilization for longer than she's been alive.

"I've been fighting Endbringers longer than you, Arc, I know what they can do, I know what they are likely to do, and I know what we have to do to stop them."

"It's hard to accept leadership this abruptly, Tattletale, I apologize. Our age difference doesn't help much, though mentally I recognize that you are a lot more experienced in the field." I straighten my shoulders, and grow a little bit, since she said I was only 95 feet tall earlier. I can't see her, but I imagine Tattletale to be standing there, eyes scanning over all the monitors and me, watching everything like a cat, ready to pounce on any stray piece of data.

"Meow" Tattletale's voice.

"Wow, keeping secrets around you just doesn't happen, does it?"

"Nope. It can be a pain sometimes. There are a lot of things I'd rather not know, which my power pretty much forces on me."

I feel sorry for her, a bit, thinking about how most relationships require at least a bit of obscurity between people. A relationship with no secrets would be... stressful at best.

"Yes, you do understand. Most younger people don't understand, or think they do, but don't realize the scale of the problem."

"I resemble that remark!" Came the voice of Imp, from nearby.

I concentrate on moving a bit faster, pulling power from the wires passing near my skin, rather than touching the wires directly yet, as the spark gets farther from me. My shoulders are trenching the buildings to either side, starting fires.

"Don't worry about the fires, Arc. Waterweird has them under control. If we had time for you to stop and turn around, you would see that he is putting out every fire you start about 500 feet behind you."

"It's still so foreign and disturbing to me that I'm doing so much damage just moving around."

Tattletale sighs. "If we shrink your spark, it will move slower, and cause more damage because Waterweird would have to let everything burn longer before he put out the fires."

"Is my spark creating any tremors in the ground? When it is small and nearly powerless, it can walk on top of stuff like it is weightless."

"I like the way you think, Arc. Dragon, do you have anything out there that can see if the spark is causing tremors?"

"No, no tremors. The spark has a low density, not much higher than atmosphere. Let us know if you make changes to the arrival path please."

"No significant change to path, Dragon, but we're going to go to a higher altitude and walk on top of buildings." Tattletale said.

I added, "Probably going to get a lot bigger too, to move faster, so watch your drones, Dragon."

"Moving drones away now. Let me know when you are at your new full size."

I came to an intersection with smaller buildings, which would allow me plenty of room to grow, and allow me to step up onto the buildings. I grew, watching around me, and moving my hands and legs, trying to feel the point at which things started to lose control. At about twice my prior height, I started to feel some of the jitters of a oversized spark, and shrunk it down a bit.

Tattletale commented "170 feet. Why did you shrink back a bit there Arc?"

"I need fine control if I'm going to walk on buildings."

"OK, Dragon, the spark is at the maximum size Arc can maintain fine control at, for walking across buildings."

"Roger that, moving drones in closer again."

I see a flash of light in the distance, and another, then a glow. "Is that Behemoth making the lights in that direction?", pointing with the hand of my spark.

"Yes Arc, that's Behemoth, he just used lightning and has activated his radiation field. Another three capes just died and several more injured."

"Understood. Dragon, I'm going to be moving a lot faster once I get a look at the layout of the building tops. Keep your drones below the level of building tops if they are between me and Behemoth. Please warn the combatants which direction I'm coming from, because I'll be coming in fast."

I stepped up on top of a nearby building, and then up again to another nearby building. Then I hopped across an alley to yet another, taller building. Then I look back towards where I saw Behemoth's energy effects. There, there, there. My vision focuses as needed to give me clear views of rooftops between myself and Behemoth. I see flying capes moving to the opposite side of Behemoth from where I am. Good enough.

The building I am now standing on is burning pretty badly now, I stood on it too long. I quickly step off, before the roof collapses, then start to accelerate across the rooftops, but not to maximum speed. It's a lot like playing hopscotch, and if I misstep, I'll wipe out a whole city block or three. When I hit the edge of the devastation zone, I accelerate as hard as I can, straight towards Behemoth, who has apparently noticed me, and is looking straight at me.

At around fifty feet tall, Behemoth is too small for me to effectively engage in any other way besides punting him at this size, so I start to shrink on final approach. I stop shrinking when the arc is around 100 feet in height, which only slows me down a little bit. I'll probably need to shrink further to grapple with him, but that will slow me down. Being twice as tall as Behemoth will do for now though.

As I close the range, Behemoth begins glowing even brighter. He gestures at me and lightning begins to strike out at me, I don't even feel the lightning, and if the radiation is hurting me I won't know about it immediately. As I get very close, he makes another gesture, and I can't tell what he tried to do. I ignore it, and aim a punch, center mass, right at his chest.

The impact is staggering, not painful, but huge. It knocks me off balance, and I skid along the ground a ways. I can see Behemoth doing the same in a slightly different vector, but he stops within 150 feet or so, I slide for about 300 feet before I stop and get my feet under me.

I hear Tattletale "Up Flying capes up, more altitude! Dragon, We have capes above Behemoth within his dynakinetic range! Their communications are out or they don't speak English."

I see a group of flying capes, closer to Behemoth than the rest, and zoom my vision in on them. They look confused. They are looking at me. Three of them are yanked in different directions and upwards by the powers of other capes, pulling them out of range. The last one look panicked and starts to fly straight up. She almost makes it.

Behemoth goes from laying on his back to a crouch and a mighty leap directly towards the fleeing cape faster than I would have ever believed possible. He apparently brings the cape within his dynakinetic range during his leap, because the flying cape begins to burn. I see this all with magnification, like she is right in front of me, I'm clenching my fists, urging her to be faster, and lucky enough. It doesn't happen. Her face distorts into a hideous scream, then her body blackens and burns, her uniform flares, her carried equipment simply melts, a couple explosions indicate either ammunition or compressed gasses in containers. Within a couple seconds, all that is left is a rain of metallic droplets and a cloud of ash, slowly settling to the ground.

I caused this. No. Behemoth caused it. That young woman's agonized face burns into my mind. She couldn't have been more than fifteen or so. She should have been having crushes on boys in high school, and preparing to be an adult, thinking about her future. Not being burned to death by a monster. Enough. I hear Tattletale.

"He's close to going berserk. He saw Lanza go down. He didn't hear my last couple sentences. He's hearing me now but not really paying attention. No, he doesn't appear to have been injured at all by the strike on Behemoth." Tattletale's voice. "Arc I know you can hear me now. Don't lose control here. We need you thinking for this fight."

"Tattletale, I am thinking. I'm thinking about a girl who I just watched get cremated in midair, whose face I am still seeing, burnt into my mind's eye. I am thinking about the way that Behemoth just landed on the ground, and looked around, like a cat looking for another low flying bird. I'm thinking how this world could use one less Endbringer."

"OK, OK, Before you go all out let us get more people out of the way. Ten seconds. We're only going to keep capes around that can safely move Behemoth to keep him within your range if he tries to get away. The fight's all yours, we'll just keep him from getting away."

"Defiant, can you hear me?" I ask, not sure if he's still in the room.

"Yes, Arc."

"Can we get more power through these lines? If so, please to it. I am going to be burning a lot of power really soon, and that first hit was pretty intense. I'm going to have to hit him a lot more like that."

"Working on it now." I heard him start to talk to the plant personnel.

"Dragon, do we have any capes that can generate electricity and control it, to provide me with more power? If so, can you get them working with Defiant to help me keep my power levels up?"

"A couple might be able to help, we'll work on getting them added to your power supply network." Dragon said.

"Arc, listen to me." Tattletale's voice. "Keep your inner Neanderthal under control. Behemoth is extremely dangerous. You've hit him once, and he's hit you several times. None of his hits have hurt you, but Endbringers are not stupid. He's going to work to find a way to hurt you, and if you are careless and he finds a way to hurt you, it's going to be bad."

"Tattletale, thank you for helping keep me from losing it completely there. The ten seconds were up a few seconds ago. I am shrunk down to a little bigger than Behemoth now, and am about to engage."

"Just try to stay calm in the fight, Arc."

I flip the covers off the cable ends which will allow me to directly feed power through my body, and take hold. A little more efficient this way, I think. "I respect that you are probably infinitely better at understanding what people are thinking than I am, but I'm not sure you can really appreciate the emotional baggage that most middle age men carry around when it comes to being protective about kids. Those of us with the dangly bits, who are old enough to have children your age, tend to be just a wee bit irrational when we see them hurt. And I just watched this fucking monster fry a teenager about your age into charcoal dust."

"I won't argue with you there Arc, I'm not wired the same way, but you have to at least try to stay calm enough to fight smart, please."

"I'll try to stay calm, I won't guarantee it will happen though."

I stop circling Behemoth, who is just watching me, waiting, apparently unconcerned. He has very little damage to his chest, despite how hard I hit him. Guess I'll just have to hit him a lot more.

I run forward, fast as I can, which at this power level and size is nowhere near as fast as before, but my fist will be a lot smaller then before too, and I am expecting him to be very hard to move. Another center mass punch to see if it does anything significant.

He doesn't dodge, he doesn't even flinch when I hit him, he just falls back, trenching the ground for twenty or so feet behind him, as I stagger for about fifty feet trying to regain control of my trajectory.

This time, there's a noticeable, shallow crater in his chest where I punched him. He's just looking at me, watching me, he doesn't even reach up to feel his chest where it's wounded.

He turns his back on me and jumps away. While he's in midair, one of the flying capes grabs him with some sort of ranged force beam and throws him back at me, with almost perfect aim. Behemoth's back exposed to me, and he's approaching FAR faster than I approached him the first time. I decide to try to do one last center mass punch, from behind. If he's got anything like a spine in there, I'm going to do my best to break it.

I time my punch so that I reach full extension right as Behemoth reaches me. I can't judge the damage done immediately because when I hit him, he stopped, falling on his back, while I shot away like I had been shot out of a slingshot. Conservation of energy there. I hit him hard enough while my feet were planted, to stop him right where I hit him, but I absorbed a lot of that energy, and my spark is only a little heavier than atmosphere. I flew about quarter mile before going through an office building and creating a short trench.

"Tattletale, that last hit, did it seem to have any significant effect?"

"You appear to have punched directly through all of his surface layers and exposed core material. Doing that in a single hit is extremely rare, you are doing well. But you haven't really slowed him down much, if at all."

I stand the spark back up, and something comes to mind. My spark's mass is low, if I can increase mass and still accelerate to close to the same velocity, I will hit a lot harder in these running strikes. I see a bank nearby, and have an idea. I run over to the bank, sweep off the roof of the building and peer inside, looking for what I know must be there. Yup, there it is, the bank safe. The big bank safes aren't all one piece like a lot of home safes, which means it is really no problem at all for me to get what I want, the safe door. I rip it off it's hinges, and clumsily pick it up off the ground with thumbless hands, setting it on the roof of a nearby building that is mostly undamaged, and using that higher point to get the door firmly gripped under my left arm. Even with no thumbs, I have a fairly solid grip this way. Now to see if this does any good.

Tattletale speaks. "Ahh, maybe we can work out a business agreement sometime."

I snort.

"Didn't think so."

Tattletale can you and Dragon look for massive objects like the bank door, which can absorb a lot of heat before melting, but give me added momentum to hit Behemoth with?

"Bank vault doors aren't good enough?" I could hear Tattletale's voice had a laugh in it. "I know, I know, you would rather it be something else. We have some capes that can generate or modify mass, I'll get some people onto that. Looks like that door is holding up pretty well though, should last at least a couple minutes."

I started accelerating back towards Behemoth again, and noticed he was slowly (carefully?) scanning his surroundings, and not paying any attention to me. Mistake.

I push myself harder, angling in towards where his back will be if he keeps turning at the same pace, It feels like I'm nearly up to 100 miles per hour, even carrying the vault door, and I start another haymaker punch aimed at where a human's spine would be, trying to hit the same hole I made before. Behemoth, using that same amazing speed I saw before when he fried the girl, simply leans to the side at the very last instant, and extends his arms to the ground, into the ground, and pushes his legs out in the path of my legs. His legs hit mine right above the knee, and ride up to my waist, then they actually pass through my spark. The impact isn't painful, but it's stunning. The energy released is absurd.

The vault door, still moving as fast as I had been when Behemoth's legs passed through me, melts in midair, turning into a spray of molten metal. Everything around me instantly melts. Behemoth and I are now in a puddle of molten rock. He does not seem terribly concerned about that. His entire body is slightly smaller than before, a different texture. As he lifts his legs, walking through the puddle of rock towards me, I can see that his legs are almost gone, where they passed through me they are much thinner than they were before. But he's still walking with the same easy motion, not hurrying at all now, taking his time..

Turning my attention to myself, I see that I've shrunk significantly. I can feel the spark absorbing power easily, rather than with a bit of resistance like before.

Tattletale is communicating with the field. "Unexpected effect. Huge energy release. Thermal bloom. Most of the flying containment capes are blind some with severe burns to large parts of surface skin, need healing ASAP."

I hear Glory Girl's voice "Dragon is guiding us to the first victims now, hopefully the damage is eye tissue, not brain tissue. We'll do what we can."

Eidolon's voice. "I have regenerated and will continue working to hold Behemoth near Arc's spark."

Other voices checking in. Behemoth closing as I stand the spark up. It's erratic at this size, so I shrink it down. That hit from Behemoth drained a huge amount of power from me. I'm not sure how effective I can be at this power level.

"Defiant and Dragon, that strike of his drained most of the spark's power reserves. Do we have more power on the way?"

I move sideways, circling a bit, letting power build up, avoiding Behemoth while walking on top of the molten rock.

"Reactors 2, 3, and 4 have been tapped in with more superconductive lines, we're testing now. Thirty seconds till live." Defiant's voice.

"Grue and I are about to try something Arc, other capes are at least five minutes away still. I have facilities set up for them to contribute power to you but they aren't here." Dragon's voice.

Tattletale's voice "Trying something? Grue what are you doing?"

A male voice I don't recognize. "Copying Arc's power, and charging my spark to provide energy to him. Dragon is explaining how they did it before, and has set up the same equipment in the same way. Oh, umm, wow, that's a hell of a feeling. Arc, here comes a jolt!"

I feel a huge surge of energy. "It worked Grue, that helped a lot, keep that up if you can."

I hear Defiant's voice and Dragon's voice, Tattletale and Grue, all organizing their efforts. I continue to avoid Behemoth, who starts looking around like he's getting bored, then he flexes his legs like he's about to jump, and at the last second shifts his center of balance and rockets directly towards me. Grue's additional power has stiffened my reactions and I was still trying to reach a size with good balance, I fail to dodge his leap

Behemoth bears me to the ground at the edge of the molten rock, then grabs my neck with his left hand and jams his right hand into my torso. Another huge release of energy. I watch as another layer melts off Behemoth, and when he pulls the hand away that was used to penetrate my torso, it is skeletal like his legs. We both sink into molten rock again.

I pull away from Behemoth, without much effort, his left hand passing through my neck with little energy lost. My spark is nearly completely drained. "Grue, now would be a good time." I say.

Once again, another huge charge of power, and couple seconds after that, I feel the background power level coming from the plant ramp up drastically, it isn't anything like the power from Grue's spark, but it's constant, and it's helping.

"All four reactors online and feeding you Arc." Defiant's voice.

"Grue's having problems processing the power as fast as you can, Arc, but we're getting it to you every thirty seconds or so." Dragon's voice.

"My power is always weaker than the original power." Grue's voice. "Another shot in a few seconds, Arc."

I dodge another attack from Behemoth. Why is he so slow on some attacks and so blindingly fast on others. Is there some pattern to it?

"I see a flier coming in, I don't know the cape driving it. There's a substantial sized contraption on the back of it. Dragon?" That from Tattletale.

"That's Phir Sē. We had no notice he would be arriving. I am trying to open communications now."

"It is my understanding that you have need of power? I have an excellent power generator here. Stellar pulse generator. Very potent." Indian voice, stilted English.

"Bring the craft down next to my remote Phir Sē, the one hovering and waving hands. I am stringing transmission cables now to that location. How long till your generator can provide power?" Dragon again. Too many voices.

"I will provide power when you provide wires and say they are properly connected. The generator is holding a charge now."

"Understood - are there more on the way that you know of?" from Dragon.

"No, I came by teleportation. I was watching this fight, overheard conversation about the cape that consumes power. Lab experiment can wait, I brought the generator."

Too much mental clutter. "Tattletale I'm going to trust that you, Dragon, and Defiant will get all the power to me that I you can, but I need less distractions. I am removing my earbuds and mic, and will be listening only to you."

"Arc is pulling commo to concentrate, you need him, talk to me." I hear Tattletale say as I pull the earbud and shirt mic off and set them to the side, then grip the power leads again.

"Tattletale is there any sort of pattern to when Behemoth attacks swiftly rather than slowly?" I ask.

"Not enough information. They aren't human, never have been. They sometimes do things for no reason that we can determine, but sometimes their goals seem clear. This time I can't tell."

I feel another shot of power from Grue. I am in fighting form again, and move to engage, I'm going to try to do electrical damage rather than physical damage.

Behemoth humiliates me again, going from slow and ponderous to absurdly fast and dexterous in a heartbeat. This time bearing me to the ground with his skeletal right hand and plunging his left hand into my chest, with the same result. A bigger pool of lava and his other hand is skeletal.

Now both of his hands and both of his lower legs are skeletal. But I am not hurt at all, just gathering power as fast as I can. I break away from him, again, easily, since my power has been drained so much.

"Why isn't he running?" I ask Tattletale. "Does he really think he's winning?"

Power continues to build from the reactors. I feel another jolt from Grue.

Tattletale warns me. "Dragon says Phir Sē's device is hooked up, and it's going to be a very large jolt of power. Are you ready?"

"Umm. Yes." As I dodge another lazy attack from Behemoth.

A huge jolt of power hits me, making anything else I've ever felt seem tiny, even the last few seconds of my own reciprocal charging with my own spark. I can't even think for a few seconds, and make mumbling noises. My spark is continuing to grow, not just instantaneously changing size like normal. Then smelling salts, I snort.

"Almost lost you there Arc, you OK?" Tattletale. "That almost knocked him out but he's not in pain." She's talking to someone else now. Yes, next time less power, reduce quantity and increase frequency for future pulses?" A pause. "OK. Do that please."

"Phir Sē will not give you that much power again, he will provide whatever power he can generate in at the same cycle time as Grue, but offset so that there is about fifteen seconds between each power delivery."

My head is clearing. I look around in my spark. Holy crap. I'm about 400 feet tall. I start to shrink myself, looking down to see Behemoth simply standing there, looking around like he wasn't even in a fight.

As I reduce my size to around 100 feet, I feel stiff. Whatever that solar pulse generator was, it was no joke. If Behemoth wants to continue to fry himself to death on me now that I have Phir Sē and Grue to supply power, I'm happy to oblige. I will even make it easier on him by reducing myself to his size even though that will make me almost immobile.

"Operation Bug Zapper" I say out loud. And then Behemoth moves at that amazing speed again. This time he doesn't try to knock me down. He grabs one arm with each hand, and clamps his fingers, penetrating the surface of the spark. When he does that, I actually feel a bit of pain.

"Ow. What the hell" I mutter, not in a lot of pain, but surprised.

"Ow?" Tattletale says. "Defiant, Arc just said 'Ow.'"

Another surge of power from Grue.

Then Behemoth stomps the ground, hard, with both feet, one right after the other.

Then the pain really begins.

"He's grounding me, somehow through my spark." I manage to gasp. I let go of the power contacts and throw myself off the chair. I don't want to absorb any more power into my spark just to have it fed back through me.

"I'm going to fight him Tattletale but get ready to run and be sure everyone knows what direction the spark will come from." I manage this through clenched jaws, and without her power, Tattletale would probably have not understood it.

"Will do. Dragon, Undersiders, Arc has stopped taking incoming power, get the power providers and plant personnel to safety. He's off the monitoring system, we can't know when his spark might come back to us. Dragon can you send your remotes up here to tend Arc? Neither myself nor Imp can stay close if that spark is going to come back." A pause. "OK, I will tell him."

"Dragon has two remotes coming to help protect you as best as possible. She also has good news - Scion has been seen nearby. Bad news is that he's not headed straight for you, he's following the trail Behemoth left. At his current velocity, you need to hold out for around two minutes."

I grunt, to let her know I have heard her, then tune out my biological body and devote all my perception into my spark.

So, Behemoth, you want to ride the tiger, do you? Let's see what you've got. That image of the girl I saw Behemoth kill earlier, still fresh in my mind, her horrified pained expression as she started to burn - I brought that face up in my minds eye again, and then I started trying to force power through Behemoth in a different path than he was pushing it through me.

All of the remaining "flesh" on Behemoth rapidly started to bubble and boil as I forced power through Behemoth, but he was still forcing power through me in much the same way as he had started to. I could vaguely hear myself howl and scream in my other body. Behemoth started calling down lightning on me which didn't seem to have any effect, maybe he was also feeling the strain here?

I doubled down. More power. All of Behemoth's flesh is gone, all that was left was the skeleton-like dark metallic substance. Doubled down, more power. I vaguely smelled bacon. This again. Twice in one week? I bring the screaming girl's image into my mind's eye again. Double down again.

Golden light from above. Behemoth looks up, and tries to break away from me. I look up and see Scion hovering there, staring at us both.

Scion just turns to look towards where the power plant is, then turns back and watches Behemoth and I grapple. Behemoth's feet break free from the ground as he tries to turn away from me, and I use that brief advantage to push one last push, everything I have left, to grow and use my leverage of greater height to throw Behemoth at Scion. Scion just moved to the side, watched me for another second or two, then turned and followed Behemoth through the air.

How had I managed to throw Behemoth so easily? I looked down at my hands. Thumbs. Fingers. I was actually hearing sounds that didn't sound right for a power plant either. Roaring sounds, looking at the molten ground that I was standing on, I found two rocks that were not melted, and picked them up, knocking them together. Yes, the spark can now hear, and has thumbs. How the hell did that happen?

I turn around looking for my bearings, hoping to see the power plant, and yes, there it was, the same direction Scion had been looking as he hovered there being an idiot. I head in that direction, staying on major roads, since I didn't seem to have a bucket brigade following me to put out fires this time.

I keep trying to return my presence to my biological body, and cannot, while getting more and more nervous every second. Wait, there it is. I shift into my body and everything feels different.

I look up and see Dragon's two remotes standing guard over me. They have torn down part of the building and built me a safety structure, without moving me.

I look up and see my reflection in the visor of the drone. A face with a blank slate of skin, with dimples over where the eyes would be, heavily blistered. I lift one of my hands, no thumbs, all of the fingers fused, severe burns across all exposed skin. I reach one hand down and... Nothing.

Disbelief. Numbness, and my spark collapses and returns to me at a fantastic speed.


	6. Chapter 6

All rights to the material contained within belong to the author of the original work, which can be found at www dot parahumans dot wordpress dot com (strange formatting had to be used to unbreak whatever the editor is doing to the link)

I am only having fun playing in Wildbow's Universe, I have no claim of ownership, past, present, or future on any character or literary element here, including characters or literary elements that I create myself.

*********Second Draft (I do welcome suggestions - it's been 25 years or so since I took English classes)*************

Voices. I ignore them. I try to ignore them anyway, but they are insistent. Frustration, anger, sadness and loss, tempered with gratitude for survival.

"Behemoth got away again" Male voice. Grue? "Why does Scion just keep letting him get away?"

"Scion is unreadable to me, inhuman, behavior is more like a machine than… He's awake." Female voice. Tattletale.

"Does he know?" Red Cross's voice.

I know. I remember what I saw in the visor of one of Dragon's remotes, and what I found when I checked to see how much like my spark, my biological body had become. Silence is good right now. I'm going to need some time to deal with this.

"No, he doesn't know." Again Tattletale.

I thought she was always right?

"No, Arc, I'm not always right - but I'm right this time. Red Cross will explain. Thank you for what you did, and thank you for the blindfold idea." I heard her walking off.

"I know just the guy for you!" Imp's voice, I think.

"Imp. Zip it." Grue's voice.

Three or four other female voices and another male voice I hadn't heard before, all fading as they walked away. I still have not opened my eyes. I don't want to see.

Red Cross cleared his throat. "Your burns are healed."

"Red, I wasn't worried about burns, I was worried about a few rather important body parts that are no longer there. Thumbs and family jewels, to be exact." I opened my eyes. Then it hit me. I am talking. I have a mouth again. I reach up, touch my lips with my fingers. Separate fingers. I look at my hand, and there's a thumb on it. I quickly lift my other hand and it also has fingers and a thumb. Neither arm nor hand has hair though, and they are very lightly colored, not sun browned at all. I'm afraid to check the last important bits. I look at Red and he is just grinning at me, obviously highly amused.

"Go ahead, finish the inventory, it's all there." Red laughed. "I'll explain shortly after we get you into a change of clothes. Dragon found that your bag you carried with you had underwear and socks in it, so we found you a sheet and rope, and you should be presentable shortly. We can go grab you real clothes afterwards."

"Joy, another toga and boots combination. If I keep this up, I'm going to set a fashion trend." I check on the family jewels as I talk. Everything seems intact. I breathe a huge sigh of relief.

"I told you. Your burns are healed." A rope and a sheet tossed into my lap, with my bag, and my spare boots dropped in front of me. In a couple minutes I'm dressed, if you want to call it that.

"Who do I need to thank this time?" I asked.

"That's what you didn't know before." Red Cross said, cryptically.

I thought about it for a second, and it didn't make sense. At this point I'm not sure that all the brain bits and pieces are fully synched, still feeling a bit off. "OK, Red, straight up, what's going on. I'm really not mentally ready for riddles right now." I look at him, and hold his eyes with my own, ready for him to tell me some sort of horrible news. "Spill it."

"Ah, short and sweet then. You healed yourself."

"How? I didn't heal myself before, either time, when I was badly hurt." I'm missing something here.

"You know about trigger events, right?"

"Sure.", I say. "I had one a week ago."

"You just had another one."

"What?"

"You triggered a second time." Red Cross explained patiently.

"How is that even possible? A second trigger?" I'm rather confused at this point. "Do I have different powers now, or something?" I release my spark from my body and can see through its eyes. "I still have my spark."

"No, no, that's not how it normally works. If you have a second trigger, it modifies or adds to abilities that you already possess. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not."

I thought about it. "Since you were smiling before, it must either be something better, or at least not something worse."

"Absolutely correct."

I'm drawing a blank trying to understand. "Red, just tell me, please. I've been burned nearly to death twice, and shot in the head once this week, I'm really not in a good mental place right now."

"OK, OK, fine." A grin. "You regenerate now. And your spark has all the bits that it didn't use to have, looks exactly like you."

I regenerate now? But I was terribly burned when I saw myself shortly ago? I look at my hands carefully. No damage. I remember severe burns and missing parts. "I was pretty severely cooked, wasn't I?" I ask carefully.

"Ah, yes. Dragon's remotes were doing what they could to keep you from actually burning, but she couldn't stop the electricity from arcing across your body. Quite frankly I'm amazed that you survived until the second trigger kicked in. You had lost about fifteen percent of your body mass to burns in your extremities, and your torso was looking more like a piece of charcoal than a human."

"That was Behemoth, frying me through my spark." I said.

"Aye, Tattletale and Dragon figured out what had happened before I even got here."

"So, step by step here, let me see if I have this right. I was in the fight with Behemoth, he started frying me. I threw myself out of the chair, and Behemoth was able to push power back into me through my spark, overloading something. This overloaded my body, and started to burn it terribly, electrical burns." I paused.

Red Cross nodded. "That's right."

"Then after a little while longer, I triggered? How do you know I triggered again instead of it just being a power that just hadn't shown itself before?

"Ah, when someone triggers, whether first or second, any other capes nearby stop whatever they are doing, stunned for a few seconds. It's been known to cause accidents. Dragon saw Imp and Tattletale stumble for no reason as they were getting away from the building. Then she saw your regeneration effect start to rebuild your body."

Something didn't add up here. "How did Dragon notice this, wouldn't she have been affected too?"

"No, Dragon wasn't present, she was remote, and recorded everything. Dragon very rarely ever goes anywhere in person. She's an extreme agoraphobic.

"Ah, I'm sorry to hear that, I hope she can get some help for that and eventually reduce the severity so she can go outdoors and enjoy it, even if it's only every now and then. I can't even imagine not being able to go hiking or fishing." I paused. "I'll want to see the recording of my healing process if it's available. Next week. After I get some mental recovery time. Have you viewed it?"

"I have," he nodded.

"Please describe the process without great detail, just the basics so I have an idea how it works."

"When you are burned, your body exudes a fibrous foamy substance that covers the damaged body part, then is absorbed back into your body, healing you. It will do this multiple times until you are fully healed. Your arms went through fourteen cycles, foaming and absorbing, healing - they were the largest mass of damage, burned off to the elbows." The regeneration is fast, apparently targeting the most life threatening damage first. Exposed internal organs healed first, then your torso healed to contain your organs, then your arms and legs healed. Your face, feet, hands, family jewels, and skin all healed at the same time."

The description of how badly I had been injured made me a bit ill. "Ah, I'll pass on seeing the video, I think. Don't worry about it."

"You can tell Dragon when you see her again. She will certainly ask."

"Huh," I grunted, confused, as I turned to Dragon's two remotes, noticing that they were still.

"Nobody at home in those two remotes anymore. They protected you from the building's collapse as your shard returned to your body."

Looking at the remotes, I noticed that they were locked together, fused limbs intertwined between each other and some heavy pieces of girder and rebar to make an enclosure, which still had some moist spots where I had been bleeding, or leaking, or whatever I did when I was healing. Looking around I saw pieces of building swept out of the way between where I had been laying and the remotes, someone had pulled me out from the shelter Dragon had made for me.

I walked around the remotes, trying to piece together what must have happened. "So, I was mostly healed when I was finally able to return to my body from my spark, and drew the wrong conclusion from what I saw, panicked, stressed out, and my spark returned to my body as I fainted. Dragon was expecting something like that and had prepared a cocoon for me, using her own remotes to hold it together."

"Pretty much." Red Cross replied.

And then my spark came straight to me, through who knows what, finally blowing out that wall and slagging the electronics of the two remotes, even melting off some of their armor. I owe Dragon another favor then." I looked at the remotes. "Two of them. Big favors."

Red Cross laughed.

I turned to him, puzzled.

"She said you would say that when you put all the pieces together. She also said that you don't owe her anything, but if you insist on having a debt, she will talk to you about it later, after you have some recovery time."

He paused, snapping his fingers in front of his chest, obviously trying to remember something.

"Oh, yes, I almost forgot. You need to know one more thing about your new power. The regeneration is limited. Look at your fingers and thumbs. You broke the blisters and rubbed them a bit raw during your fight with Behemoth, on the power leads. The regeneration did not heal those, in fact it restored them exactly as they were. Same thing with the bruises that you gave yourself when you threw yourself out of the chair." He paused. "Don't count on that regeneration to heal anything until you test it. In a controlled environment I can help you figure out what you will heal from with regeneration, and what you will not, something like allergy testing. But that's definitely not a today thing."

"A question for you now."

"Go ahead"

"How did I maintain myself in my spark when I had the second trigger? If it stunned me, my spark should have returned to my body. In fact after I woke up again, and was frightened by the damage, I did lose control and the spark came back."

"Dragon and I are puzzled by that too." Red paused, thinking. "We know your two selves have independent brain activity, and function in some way like a RAID 1 array, because when you had brain damage, your biological body took information from your spark, and rebuilt lost information in the damaged areas of the brain after Eidolon regenerated you. Using that metaphor, we tentatively think that the second trigger simply dismounted the spark's brain from the system while the biological body was undergoing the second trigger, then your spark's brain remounted after the trigger was finished, and new data was written to your spark from your biological brain. We don't understand how. There are few masters with multiple bodies which have independent thought, and none that we know of with your shared-yet-independent brains. You are one of a very small number of masters who have experienced a public second trigger. We'll probably never understand it." He shrugged his shoulders.

I thought about it for a bit. "Makes more sense than anything I can come up with, and I trust you guys to know more about cape stuff than me anyway."

Then I remembered what Red had said before, and muttered to myself "…all the bits that it didn't use to have..."

"Red I need to check something, step back a bit?"

The Cheshire cat grin on Red Cross as he says "Sure thing" and walks away a few paces tells me that he heard me mumbling and also lets me know I'm probably right about what I think it meant.

Spark out, turns around, and we touch fingertips. Briefly, barely an instant. The spark flares into visibility. Hrm, yup, exactly as was insinuated. It looks just like me, including a correctly scaled family jewels package. I look at the face, hair, ears, everything matches, except the coloration of course – electricity doesn't come in pasty white Caucasian. Of course if I get enough power in me, the radiant heat will be a bit of a giveaway too.

Red is laughing at my expression. Chokes out "Hottest supermodel in the world! I bet Playgirl would love to do a shoot with you."

I start laughing with him a second later. The mental image of me walking around at 100 feet tall, buck naked fighting criminals with a scale sized family jewels package is hilarious. I imagine I'm going to get a lot of complaints from the conservative folks. I wonder if I can find a tinker that can make a heat-immune loincloth. Perhaps a toga? I snort at the idea. It would have to be able to grow and shrink with me as well. I'll ask Dragon.

We both stop laughing, and I cross my arms and ground the spark, then internalize it and make sure my toga isn't burning.

My stomach starts making loud, obnoxious noises. "Regeneration hunger. Anyplace around here to get food from?"

Here are some peanuts to tide you over, let's get you into some clothes first, sun will be going down soon and it will be a bit chilly.

About thirty minutes later I'm in real clothes again, and guess what, more fruitcake. True to form, it tastes delicious after regeneration, even though I hate fruitcake. I notice Red Cross staring at me like I've grown a second head on my shoulders.

"You ever been regenerated, Red?"

"Nope. You seem to be actually, err, enjoying that. Fruitcake."

I grin at him. "I hate fruitcake. Can't stand it at all. This is delicious. Regeneration hunger apparently trumps taste buds."

Red grins, then lifts his communication bracer near his mouth and says "Dragon, you ready for us over there?"

Dragon's voice responds in the affirmative.

"OK, we'll be there shortly."

The mayor of the city offered me the key, I was a hero.

I was asked to join various hero cape groups and refused. I had the feeling that most of them didn't want me as an active member anyway. Any time I was tempted to join a cape group as a combat member, I would remember Lanza being burned by Behemoth. Imagining my self-hatred if I were to ever do that to someone was enough to keep me a rogue cape, not participating in battles with other capes.

I spent some time back in Columbia, figuring out what I would do with myself, spent some time with Murphy doing some fishing and talking. Very carefully. From shore. Next to shallow water. Murphy was a good friend. The new material that we generated when testing my power made him a great deal of money, and he didn't have to let himself be used as a target anymore. He started an orphanage and built a hotel near a children's hospital and allowed parents of the children to stay there for free. It was frustrating to him that he didn't dare go to either place in person, but video conferencing with the orphan kids and the families with ill children allowed him enough social interaction to give him purpose in life.

I offered my services as a power generator for food, board, and tips to any superhero group sanctioned by the Protectorate or the Guild at first. I made a good living, heroes, especially tinkers, were generous. What's a few petawatts of power to me anyway?

Any time there was a major natural disaster, I would deploy to act as a power station for as long as needed until the grid was restored. I helped with Endbringer fights when I could. I drank a toast to the memory of Lanza after I heard Scion killed Behemoth, a fight I was unaware of - I was in Africa at the time to see if I could establish communication with Ash Beast. I was never allowed to fight Leviathan, but I scouted during his fights, occasionally making myself visible to him, to lead him away. It didn't take long before he started ignoring me completely, but I could still follow him around and warn people where he was or where he was headed. If I had gone after him at high power, I'd fry everyone within several thousand yards as soon as he hit me with a salt water tidal surge. Simurgh was also scouting-only. I could see through all of her illusions with my spark, but if I tried to power up and engage her, she would just use me against other heroes. Tohu, Bohu, and Khonsu, however, they saw me many times on the front lines.

…

My mind clears, the pain is growing more distant now. I won't last much longer. I am being held aloft, helpless, by a golden fist clenching the front of the half melted metallic jacket I am wearing. I watch the spit slowly drip off Scion's left eyebrow and land on his cheek as the golden light slowly, bloodlessly, finishes consuming my arms and legs. The bastard is just staring at me, looking for something while his power eats me alive, not allowing me to bleed to death.

I manage to utter a final "Fuck You" to the monster that has killed billions, if not trillions. Then my diaphragm is sundered by the golden light and my lungs will no longer compress air to allow me to either spit or talk. All I can do is stare my hatred at him. When my chest is nearly gone, he sets me on the ground, carefully propped up so I could see Murphy's corpse, surrounded by hundreds of dead children, most of them horribly burned, if I were to choose to look at them. Scion continues to watch my eyes. I don't give him the satisfaction of seeing me look at them. All I will give Scion is hatred, he will see no pain or fear in me. I continue to stare at Scion's eyes until darkness erases my hate.


	7. Chapter The End

This is the end of Arc, folks. Thanks to everyone for the reviews, faves, and follows!

Arc was always meant to be a short series, something to blow some of the rust off 25-year-old writing skills. There's still a lot of rust there, but not as much as there was when I started!

I will be writing some original fiction after I take care of a project or two that fell behind due to Arc. Probably play with Wordpress, because it allows the author and the readers to communicate easily. But I'll also check out this site's original fiction sister-site.


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